Breathing in the Nothingness
by cane-jian
Summary: How am I here? Why am I here? Does it matter? . . . No, I guess it doesn't. All that really matters . . . is what's right in front of me, and what's inside of me. I cannot . . . WILL NOT let this cruel world take away who I am, not again! Even if it makes surviving the trials to come all the harder . . . Hollow SI/Self Insert. Disclaimer: Bleach is the property of Tite Kubo.
1. Ch 1 First Breath

**AN: 5:50 PM, November 3rd, 2018. Ok, so, I haven't so much as looked at a work document in what feels like months. Now, instead of getting back to my old stuff, I'm writing something new. As usual, a SI. I really need to do something else one of these days, but I have a fondness of fix-fics in general. Oh well. Hopefully I mange to get back into the swing of things soon. Now on with the story!**

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POV: ?

It was dark. What little light there was filtered through small holes in the roof. The roof was held aloft by massive tree like pillars, as numerous as the redwoods in the forest around the campground my parents always forced me to go to when I was younger.

I Moaned at the back of my throat, my head pounding. Even as I did so, a rumble like two massive boulders grinding together echoed around me. ?

I looked around from where I lay, but for as far as the eye could see, there was nothing but more of the same. I felt light headed. I couldn't focus. Were was I? What was this? I didn't know, and those thought left me mentally exhausted.

I raised my hand to my head, the motion seeming oddly slow and sloppy, like I was under water. As my hand fell across my forehead, I noticed another anomaly. It felt as if there was an additional layer between on my skin. You know how when you have some tight fitting clothing on and you run your hand over it, you can feel the cloth indenting? Well it was like that, only with something denser, like leather.

Pulling my hand away, I found that there was some sort of bone white glove, or gauntlet upon it, with pointed fingers, bladed like knives. I stared at my hand for a good few minutes, examining every detail. My gaze flowed up my wrist, to my elbow, and further to the shoulder. All cloaked in black.

I gazed down, looking at my body, still splayed on the ground. Pure black robes, white shoes. A hole in my torso. I tried to jump to my feet, but the action was slow, weighted, and the way the air flowed around my limbs felt wrong. As I stood, I again raised my hands to my face, running my bladed fingers over the hard, yet sensitive material. What I found felt like a hockey mask.

What was this? What was going on? My mind, it couldn't take it! I felt drunk, or sick, or sleepy, my mind wasn't working in its usual manner. What was this? What was this!? Suddenly, an odd feeling awoke in me, like someone had suddenly ripped out my guts, but there was not true pain. Only emptiness. I reared back my head, and screamed a scream that shook the world.

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POV: 3d person

Hueco Mundo, the hollow world. It is cruel place, devoid of any semblance of law, beyond survival of the fittest. The inhabitants of this world were the hollows. Spirits who had, for one reason or another lost a part of themselves. Something at the core of their existence, who spent the entirety of their horrible afterlives eating their fellow souls in a forsaken attempt to fill the hollow voids were they once had hearts.

And now, a new one hollow had now, though some abnormal means, come into this forsaken world. But, like its appearance in this world, it was different.

In the forest of menos, it stood stood. Like all Gillians, it was tall, roughly seven stories tall. Its figure was somewhat more humanoid than most menos, the figure cutting a rough rectangle, with a definable neck area that lacked the usual spikes. The most outstanding feature of this paticular hollow, was the head. Surrounded by a large hood, the creatues mask was a simple reverse teardrop shape, with two roughly triangular holes showing unfocused, golden brown eyes.

One feature, above all others, stood out. The mouth. Now, as creatures forced to consume others simply to continue their meagre existence, the mouth was a vital part of any hollow. Thus, see a hollow with a honeycomb like gap in their mask instead of of a mouth was quite shocking.

This particular hollow wandered, seemingly aimlessly, around the forest, eyes ill focused. Breathing deeply, yet never seeming to exhale. Every so often, it would form a cero in its hand, and then stair at it for a few minutes, as if enamoured with the deep red-purple glowing sphere, before swiping its hand and firing it.

After an undetermined amount of time, the massive creature paused, and stared of into the distance, before beginning the walk in a certain direction. After a few seconds of walking, the creature stopped, and stared at its own feet, before shifting its gaze to its own hand, staring at it as the hollow moved the limb back and forth, listening to the wind whistle as the bone white, clawed apendage displace the air. Suddenly clenching its fist, it whipped its fist through the air.

It continued to stair, before repeating the motion, each time the lib moving faster, as the limb took on a barely noticeable glow. After a few minutes of this, it stopped entirely, and turned back to . . . wherever it had been going.

It started walking. Slowly at first, but as it continued, it began moving faster, footsteps that had once taken several seconds to complete, now taking but a single second, and the rate only increased, until the pounding of the menos feet came like the pounding of a jack hammer, the massive hollow covering several times the length of its own body with every second that past, the "trees"of the forest bluring as the massive entity passed, any unfortunate enough to be in the way it went _through_ , without so much as slowing.

As it, ran . . . no, _juggernauted_ forward, it would let out a, " _puff, puff"_ , every fiew seconds. Like its pace, this grew fast and faster as time passed, until the truth of this sound was revieled. _"huff . . . huff . . .haff . . .haff . . .haa . . .ha . . . haha . . . ha,ha, ha, haa,haaa, haa, hahhaahahahaaahaaahaaahaahaahahahahahahahahahahaha!_

A mad sound, half laugh and half scream echoed out of the black robed beings throat, the formerly dead eyes of the hollow now filled with glee as it surged towards its target.

After several moments of this, the hollow finally found what it sought. A _herd_ of other gillians, several dozen in fact, moving at a rather slow rate in the opposite direction.

As it approached, several of them turned to face him, some slowly tilting their heads as if curious. However, this brief moment of calmness was summarily shattered as he reached them. Not slowing in the slightest, the abnormal menos crossed it's arms before it's slammed into the others, sending the first four or so completely flying into the others, never once ceasing to crackle.

However, that was not enough to cancel it's momentum, and it continued to crash through them, only stopping once it had blasted its way to the very end of the herd, leaving just under half of them on the ground. As it came to a stop, it grabbed the nearest menos by the back of its head, and with a vicious yank, slammed its face repeatedly into its own mouth-area. However, it's attempt to eat was foiled by its own mask, and the only result of it's actions was large cracks flowing through its victims mask.

After a few seconds of this the hollow stopped, staring at its victims brutalized face, pupils shrinking until they were but dots. It began to be breath deeply, exhaling for the first time since it entered hueco mundo, panting massive breaths as it allowed the pitiful creature in its talons to fall to the ground, flopping like a rag-doll.

Still breathing heavy, it slowly stood to its full height, starring down at the broken form at its feet, before slowly turning its head to look around itself. It saw that some of the hollows it had knocked down had climbed back to their feet, and that they were all staring at him, eyes distant. As it watched, they slowly began to advance towards the abnormal hollow.

Its gaze shifted back and forth along the shifting wall of black, as they enclosed on it, but it made no action to stop them. It's inhaling grew louder, and louder, until the hollow faced towards the roof of the cavern . . .

"AAHAAAAAAAAHAHAHHH!"

. . . and unleashed a bloodcurdling scream that had sent ripples through the air, staggering the ring of its fellows surrounding it and knocking several of the only recently righted hollows back off their feet.

It screamed for several seconds, until, as suddenly as it started, it stopped, leaving the hollow staring wide eyed at the roof. Then, with a sodden motion, it's gaze returned again the the menos laying broken at is feet. As it stared, it's pupils began to expand, consuming its entire eyeris, before suddenly going slit-ted like a lizards.

Falling to it's knees, the a abnormal began clutching at the hollows face, ultimately finding a grip on the oversized nose normal to menos, and with its other hand, pried open the creatures mouth. Placing its own face over the gillian, the hollow inhaled, the rush of air into its grated maw howling. Slowly at first, the broken masked hollow began to shiver, and it began to clutch and struggle against the one holding it down.

It move faster and struggle more violently, even as red, flame like energy began to flow from its open mouth and into the other hollow. However, its struggles appeared vain, the red continuing the flow, now leaking from its eyes, and the cracks in its mask as well. Finally, with shudder, the flow stopped, and the lesser menos stopped moving.

Almost immediately, the suction stopped. The abnormal hollow slowly rose to its full height, the broken . . . thing collapsed on the ground at it's feet. It's mask seemed even pailer, its eyes were even more distant and dead, and even the black of its robes seemed . . . lesser, than before.

It's gazed shifted. Looking around itself, it saw that all the other gillians stood around it in a ring, shuffling as if nervous never looking away from the abnormal who had just sucked on of their own dry.

The two groups continued the stare at one another in silence, for a moment, before a familiar sound rippled through the air.

" _Ah . . .ah . . . ha, ha ha, haha, hahahahah, AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA . . . !"_

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 **AN: 2:20 AM, Nov 7th 2018. Ok, so, I wrote 70% of that in the past three hours. I am now tired. I hope you like what I've written thus far. I go sleep now. Goodbye.**


	2. CH 2 Emergence

**AN: 10:01 PM, Nov 7th, 2018. Well, in the . . . 19 hours since I publish this, I have gotten 5 Favs, 4 Follows, and one, one word review. Was the "Okay" meant to be a good thing or a bad thing? Ok, He's favourite-ed this, so I guess it's positive.**

 **Anyway, anyone else have thoughts? I find it hard to know what I need to improve on if don't get advice.**

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 **Pov: Third person**

In Hueco mundo, one law lay absolute, and that was survival of the fitest. You either became the strong, submitted to the strong, or fed the strong. In key with this, most menos would either obey stronger hollows, or wander aimlessly searching for a master.

One such group, headed by a single conscious menos, now wandered the menos forest of hueco mundo. This group possessed roughly eight members, sometimes growing with the arrival of new members, sometimes shrinking as they were attacked by other groups, or eaten by their leader.

They wandered aimlessly, blank eyes staring off into the distance. A journey with no destination in mind.

The leader of this troup of hollows was relatively young for a hollow, having wandered the wastes for less than two decades, not that it knew this timeframe. In that time, it had had little thought on why it acted the way it did. Only that it didn't like feeling weak and helpless, and that having others follow it, bending to its will, made it feel good. That having them follow it every order made it fell free itself.

So it wandered, others following, satisfied in its rule, no matter how small. It did not bother to think of things beyond itself, the future never on it's mind. Why would it? It had never met a creature greater than itself.

So it wandered in the bliss of ignorance, unaware of the true dangers of it's world.

It was soon to get a rude awakening.

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 **Pov: Unamed Gillian**

It was content. It did not know why, but it was, and that was enough.

Their was an eternally shifting hunger within it, but this was negligible, they had already learned that no amount of eating would satisfy their urges, so their was no real point. If they ever got to unbearable, they could just eat another member of their troup. Not like they would run away even if they were getting eaten.

They gazed ahead, never sparing a thought to were they were going, but never stopping, feeling an endless urge that they had no idea how to satisfy, so they continued, never stopping.

However, today, their was a feeling in the air. An . . . energy, like their was a storm approaching(not that the hollow could make such an analogy). The gillian, having not felt fear since it first entered heuco mundo, paid this feeling not mind. Thus, when it felt a spiritual pressure on the horizon, it thought nothing of it.

On occasion, they would encounter another menos, who would then join them, submiting to the superior power of the troupe leader, and the troupe would grow, for a time, only for it to shrink again when they lost control of its hunger. Why would this new gillian prove to be any different?

However, as the minutes passed, the troupe leader's curiosity grew. When it first detected the approaching menos, it had assumed that it was nearby from how small the reiatsu was, but now, they were growing stronger, as if it was far away, and far stronger than it had originally thought.

Even now, the approaching force's reiatsu signature was only continuing to swell at an alarming rate. Feeling panic for the first time in it's memory, the lead gillian, turned as fast as it was able, only to be knocked to the ground as something slammed into it.

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 **POV: Hooded Gillian**

The hooded menos charged a heard of it's lesser brethren, as it had done dozens of times by now. In its usual strategy, it grabbed the nearest gillian, even as it slammed through the centre of the pack, flinigin them forward to knock any not in it's path down.

Once it had came to a stop, it immediately turned and grabbed the only menos still standing, ripped it's mouth open, and sucked out it's energy, leaving it a withered husk on the ground. It's gaze then shifted to the other gillians laid out on the ground around it, some of whom climbing back to their feet.

This was it's favourite hunting strategy. Send them all flying then drain them one by one as they got back to their feet. Practically bursting with glee, it set into it's usual routine, grab, drain, drop. Grab drain, drop. Grab drai- _"Voom!"_ a cero clammed into it's side, stopping it in its tracks. It turned to face the source of this attack, eyes narrowed.

Another Gillian, with an abnormal mask, lacking any eyes whatsoever. No matter. The hooded gillian faced off with the other hollow for a second, before charging it with reckless abandon. The other menos braced itself for the collision, only for the masked menos to dash right passed it, spin on one foot while charging a cero in one hand, and fire said cero point blank into it's face, cracking it's mask and leaving it on the ground withering in pain.

Deciding to leave the abnormal for last, the hooded gillian returned to the remaining troupe members, who had climbed to their feet. Advancing at a fast walk(still faster than most gillians could hope to move) the hodden hollow was upon them within five seconds.

The nearer of the two raised its right hand and swiped at it's face, however the hooded hollow caught its hand, and with a squeeze, crumbled it, before reaching forward, grabbing the back of it's head, and slamming their head's together, resulting in multiple fractures running through the weaker menos mask. The hooded hollow proceeded to drain it before it could recover, before using it's body as a shield to block a cero from the remaining hollow.

Turning to said hollow, the hooded menos, dropped it's victim striding purposefully towards it, as it backed away instinctual. It raised it's arm to bash the menos over the head, the weaker hollow raising it's arm to try and block. The blow came, utterly crushing the defending arm, and carrying through to the mask, all but shattering it.

Before it could fall to the ground the hooded menos grabbed it by the shoulder and drained it. Now only the leader remained.

Said leaded was now on it's knees, shivering in either pain or fear. The hooded menos, grabbed it by the back of the head, and dragged it towards it's face . . .

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 **POV: Unnamed Alligator Adjuchas**

For several years this adjuchas had wandered Hueco Mundo, hunting, eating, and growing stronger. However, in all that time, it had never seen a menos move as quickly as this one. Most gillian could barely handle a slow walk, and even with their vast size ended up being slow compared to their more evolved brethren.

This one? It ran. It ran _fast._ Arguably faster than most of it's fellow adjuchas, a fact that cemented into the biped crocodilian's mind that this hollow was powerful. And by its reiatsu, it was on the brink of evolution. And that made it an even bigger threat. The adjuchas had watched this hollow from afar for several days by this point in time, not that it could tell in the sun-less realm, and had seen it demolish three such herds in that time.

Each time only served to reinforce that sense of urgency in the back of it's mind. Fight, or flight? Something told the adjuchas that this hollow _could_ kill it. And that scared it. How was is supposed to fight this thing if it evolved, when it was already this powerful? No, it decided. It had to deal with this thing now, before it became any stronger. If it evolved their was no way the reptile would be able to outrun it, let alone _fight_ it.

So, as the hooded Gillian drained the pack leader dry of energy, the adjuchas charged it from behind, finally letting loose it's reiatsu now that it had decided to stop hiding itself. The hooded gillian seemed to sense it's approach, dropping the now mostly drained gillian, and turning to the adjuchas in time to receive a tackle to the belly that staggered it, the adjuchas bouncing off and charging a cero in it's mouth.

The adjuchas fired the cero at the still off balance hollow, however it's blast was blocked by the hooded gillians arm, leaving horrific burns that must have neared the bone(assuming menos have bones . . . ).

Seemingly realizing it's inability to stabilize itself before being attacked again, it bent it's knees and, in what is possibly the most extreme display of agility ever displayed by a Gillian class menos, back-flipped into a role, ending with the menos crouching on one knee with enough distance between it and the adjuchas the breath.

Literally, as it then inhaled with such force that the vacuum began to pull the ground right out from under it's opponent feet, and drag said foe towards it.

The adjuchas cursed, realizing that, for all it's fear, it had still underestimated the hooded gillian. Crouching itself low, it surged forward, using the vacuum to gain greater speed, launching forwards, jumping at the gillian's head with the intention of taking a bite out of its mask and ending it's evolution. However, the hooded gillian was prepared, and with a vicious swing, batted the adjuchas out of the air, sending it bouncing across the sand.

As it tried to climb back to it's feet, the sound of pounding filled it ears and it looked up in time to take the hooded gillian's foot to the chest, winding it and sending it flying into the air. As it spun in the air, the adjuchas found itself slammed into again, the charging menos overtaking it right away and batting it. This time it slammed into one of the pillars supporting the cavern roof.

As it tried to pry itself out of it's crater, the hooded menos continued its forward charge, relying on it's momentum to give it victory. The adjuchas looked up at the rapidly aproachig figure and sighed, giving up on its attempt to escape. Less than a second latter the gillian slammed into, and through, the pillar sending the adjuchas flying painfully(again).

As the adjuchas finally came to a stop, it rolled onto it's back, looking at the hooded gillian, who had slowed to a slow walk after blasting through the pillar. It's relatively slow approach only served to terrify the adjuchas more. It tried to crawl away, scooting backward through the sand, eyes never leaving it's opponent.

The hooded gillian strode forward, it's undamaged left arm raised above it's head, it's left arm dangling at its side, looking like it was about to fall of. The adjuchas watched in horror as the raised right hand gained a deep violet glow, and slowly descended towards it, giving the impression of a guillotine. The hand slammed into the adjuchas, the middle finger piercing right through it's stomach.

The adjuchas threw it's head back and screamed in pain, even as it was dragged from the ground by the larger hollow. Realizing that it had only seconds before it was drained of it's reiryoku, it began to struggle in a pitiful display of desperation. However, it struggles were in vain, and it soon found itself face to face with the hooded hollow. With a horrible gasping sound, the adjuchas power began to leak from it's body through it's mouth, eye's, and all the injuries it had sustained.

As it grew weaker, it's will to keep fighting did as well. Soon enough it's body began to fell weak and . . . bloated? Was it growing larger? Why? Was . . . was it's evolution reverting?! No! It couldn't go back to being a gillian! It couldn't! It . . . could . . . n't . . .

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 **Pov: Unamed Hooded Hollow**

Starring at the small, strong hollow that had attacked it, the menos felt satisfaction. This was the most filling prey it had ever had! As it drained it's latest victim, however, it began to feel . . . odd. Like it's skin was starting to get baggy. However it's attention was taken off of that, as the hollow clutched in it's hand began to expand. _'?'_

The hollow grew larger and heavier, bloating until, instead of a lizard, it was a mere gillian locked in its grip, folded in on itself like a rag doll. Allowing the now drained hollow to fall from its grasp, it tilted it's head curiously. What had happened? However, before it could ponder further, it's attention was drawn back to it's own body, now feeling much to . . . loose, like clothes that didn't fit. Clothes? Where had that come from? What did that mean? What . . .

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 **POV: 3rd person**

A surge of energy erupted from the Gillian surrounding the hollow in a pillar of light, obscuring it from view. After several minutes had passed, the light receded, revealing a new figure, an adjuchas, now stood in it's place.

The hollow, tall and thin, stood a full twelve feet tall, even though it was heavily slouched forward. It's mask was shocking basic, lacking any decoration save a honey-comb like grate where the mouth should be.

Over its body was a long, pail, hooded lilac robe, which appeared to be made out of hundreds of sown together bandages, the the pieces around its white armoured legs especially ragged. It's arms were long, thin, and skeletal. It's tin fingers were practically bladed. Emerging from under it's robe was a long, thin tail, easily three times as long as the hollow was tall, with a bulb on the end shaped like a wasp's stinger.

The hollow stood, perfectly still, for a time, before it slowly began to look around. It glanced down at its hands, examining them thoroughly. Finally, it spoke. "What?" it looked at its body, then looked around, spinning rapidly, it's motions all but panicked.

Finally it fell to it's knees, clutched it's head, and began to hyperventilate, if it can be called that without exhalation. Suddenly, it looked up. It saw the roof of the cavern. It shot to it's feet, and in a blur to fast for most to see, shot to the nearest pillar.

It starred straight up the pillar, for a second, before it dug the claws of one hand into it, then the other, and began to drag itself up. Slowly, it's movements grew fast, it's hand pounding out a fast pace, and it's speed growing. Eventually it was surging towards the distant roof at speed surpassing it's top charging speed from when it was a menos, its arms nothing but a blur, the wind _screaming_ around it.

With a final surge of motion, it reached the cavern roof . . . and blasted right through it, like a high diver striking water.

On the surface of Hueco Mundo, the vast white desert, the ground swelled for a moment, then erupted as a figure shot into the sky.

The hooded adjuchas seemed to float for a moment, before gravity re-asserted itself, and it fell back down to the sands, landing crouched on it's feet.

It rose to it's full height, glanced around, then looked straight up, taking in the full moon. Finally, after a long pause, it fell to it's knees, clutched it's head, and . . .

" _ **AHHAAAAAAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"**_

. . . Unleashed a bloodcurdling scream.

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 **AN: 2:58 AM, NOV 15th, 2018. Ok, I am noting a pattern to my writing style. I write at about a hundred words a day, then, I finish the remaining 50-90% all in one day, usually taking me way passed my usual log of time. Luckily I look a nap this afternoon so I'm not that tired . . . still need to be in bed soon.**

 **Ok, so I now have . . . 8 favs, 9 follows, and 2 reviews. Ok. Nice. Nothing worth responding to (no offence) just and Okay and and well wishing. So, see you . . . hopefully before the end of the month . . .**


	3. Practice and Prowling

**AN: 12:06 AM, NOV 16th, 2018. Ok, so I've put off starting for a couple of hours now, time to start chapter 3.**

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 **POV: Unnamed hooded Adjuchas**

Sand. Bone white sand. Endless sands as far as the eye could see. This was Hueco Mundo. The hollow world.

As I stared out over these sands, I felt, fittingly, hollow. The small hole in my stomach, just large enough to fit a base ball, only served to accent this. My mind felt numb. No matter what I did, I couldn't bring any emotion to to surface. So I was left alone with my thoughts.

So I was left stairing out over the endless sands of this forsaken world, wondering what the point was, trying to find memories that just didn't seem to be there.

Who was I? How did I get here? Why did this happen? I could answer none of these questions. The last thing I remember is waking up in that cavern and panicking, before following my instincts to go to the surface. Not that coming up here helped.

My memories of "Myself" were blurred. I couldn't remember my own name, or really anything about my life. Sure, their were facts, but no details. Like, I actually like doing math. But were did I learn math? I have a nasty temper, but I don't know if I developed it or it's natural. I remember going to the zoo and seeing animals, but not any of the interactions during which. I remember staring in the mirror thinking but the face is blurred out . . .

At the thought of the mirror, something swelled up within me, an instinct. Something telling me . . . yes, lace my power . . . my reiatsu into the air in a certain way. I raised my hand and followed my instinct. After a moment, a reflective surface appeared in front of me. I found, as it looked like a poorly maid fun-house mirror, and my reflection was to warped to tell me anything.

I spent several hours practising this new ability, trying to get a perfectly flat surface. Sure, I came close A couple of times, but as I was quickly remembering, I was, and am, a perfectionist. That, and I had nothing better to do.

I have no idea how long it took me, but I eventually managed to get a flat mirror that didn't distort my appearance in some way. Hazah. As I starred at myself in my mirror, I pondered. This seemed familiar. And that familiarity was comforting. How much time have I spent just staring in a mirror, thinking? I remember thinking about myself, about my appearance my beliefs . . . but again, wile I have facts, there are no details.

I felt my teeth grit(Did I even have teeth? Was this a phantom sensation?) as I though of this. Again, I feel like I'm trying to judge a book by it's cover, only it's book I wrote myself and thus _should_ know better that anyone except maybe the publisher. But I'm left clutching at straws, sitting here, alone, in Hueco Mundo . . . . . . . . . . . ? how did I know that was it's name!?

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 **POV: Unnamed Hooded Aduchas**

It had been several days (I think, time's hard here, unless you go by moon phase and I'm no expert) since I had the epiphany concerning the things that I know that I shouldn't. It appears that I remember every story I had ever read(or watched) in detail. When I read them, how I found them, and other little details like that are still blurry, but I can remember all of them in starling detail compared to everything else. Now what to do with info?(besides rage about not knowing how one piece ends since I was technically dead.)

I knew I was in a manga/anime Bleach by . . . OK, don't have the author's name. But I do remember that I watched most of the anime, and at least read the . . . online encyclopedia page on the rest of it since I was to lazy to go for the manga. I had also read multiple . . . fan-fictions? Hey, I remembered something! I had read multiple fanfictions on Bleach as well, weather that would help was anyone's guess. Well, actually, it may, as I had skipped the filler arcs and movies, so my knowledge of them was restricted to what I'd read . . .

As I though, I walked, and as I walked, I played with my mirrors, making oddly shaped mirrors, or making them and immediately smashing them for fun. Also, I had learned that attacking a mirror from behind was a bad idea.

When I formed a mirror, their were two sides to it. The reflective side and the totally blank side. Now when one says blank, white tends to come to mind, but I admit, I just haven't thought of anything better to call it. The blank side, was pure black, rather than white. As in, the total black of the absolute absence of light. And lets just say that it is orders of magnitude harder to brake the mirrors from the blank side. I should know, I tested with Cero, it takes less than a second of charging to break them from the mirror side, and I had to count to thirty in order for the cero to actually do damage.

In will admit, I am very proud of my mirrors right now.

Another thing I have noticed is that I can, seemingly, absorb reishi from the atmosphere simply by inhaling. I've tried using this to raise my own reiryoku, but once I reach "full" it just starts making me feel bloated, and I start glowing purple as it leaks out of my body. Can pore all the excess energy into a cero extremely fast, though, so it's a good gimmick, if nothing else.

The rapid recharge ability was a real blessing, as it lets me practice my ability's without wearing myself out in the process. That could be life saving in a fight, especially since I'm still getting used to my abilities.

Speaking of, another ability I have discovered, is that I can, by pumping reiatsu into my bandage like robes, I can make them extend and manipulate them like tentacles! I can even cut them off and use them to make, admittedly shabby, ropes and such. The moon has changed by about a quarter since I first made said ropes, and they still haven't started to dissolve or anything, so they may be permanent . . . or, at least normal, as far as ropes made of bandages go.

The final thing I have been working on is cero. The basic ability is one I had a hard time with at first, as every time I tried to charge it in my mouth, I ended up inhaling it instead. It felt weird . . . Either way, after a while I figured I could charge it in my hand by making a certain shape with my fingers, like I'm holding a ball with just my finger tips.

Once I'd gotten around that little drawback, I began to get the hang or charging Cero, and thus far have increased my charging time by about 50%( a rough estimate, don't quote me on that). I'll admit, blowing away small sand dunes, instead of walking over them is satisfying.

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POV: Hooded Adjuchas

 _'In this world, survival of the fittest is law.'_ I thought. _'But that does not excuse_ this _!'_

Before me was a scene that served to get my blood boiling. A cheetah like hollow, long, thin, and fast, was more or less torturing a frog like hollow to death, blurring in, slashing it, and blitzing away faster that it could counter, laughing all the while.

Gritting my currently nonexistent teeth at the blatant display of sadism, I began advancing towards the pair, doing my best to keep my reiatsu tightly rained in, even as my mind boiled with barely contained anger. _'If your going to kill something, at least don't draw it out!'_ I thought as I picked up my pace, now nought but a blur, and slammed my leg into the cat, sending it flying.

As I came to a stop, I noted the size difference between myself and the cat, the creature barely coming up to my knee.

It looked surprised to see me, apparently I'd rained myself in well enough that it didn't feel me coming, and it was to engrossed in it's "Game" to hear me coming.

It's expression shifting to a snarl, it shoot towards me at ridiculous speeds, I barely managed to avoid loosing a chunk of my shoulder. I glared at the feline, meeting it's beady red eyes. It snarled, before charging me again, only this time I met it's lunge with a punch, my greater weight resulting in it being sent skidding back, shaking it's head and rubbing it's nose with a paw where I had struck it.

I took the moment to glance in the direction of the frog, noting that it was hopping away a.s.a.p. Rolling my eyes a returned my gaze to the circling cheetah. I made "come hither" motion, causing the oversized cat to tense and snarl.

I flexed my fingers, before suddenly firing an, admittedly weak, cero. The fact that it was horribly under-powered didn't seem to register in time for the cat to resist the urge to jump though, allowing me to dash forward and land a slash on it midair, causing it to stumble when it landed, before the regeneration kicked in.

I began to slowly curl and uncurl my fingers, the action seeming to make the cheetah nervous, before it turned and tried to run. Snorting, I inhaled. And inhaled. And inhaled, the resulting vacuum pulling the cat back towards me.

The second it got withing arms range, I struck it in the stomach with my hands knife like fingers, firing a half charged cero out of the same hand to put the cat at a greater distance. The cat hollow hit the ground, bounced, and rolled a few times before coming to their feet, snarling.

The cat appeared to grit their teeth for a second, before turning to run away, shooting off into the distance with a burst of dust in their wake.

Growling, I shoot off after them, eye's narrowed.

For the first few seconds, the cheetah was gaining distance, however, as a purple glow overtook my limbs, I began gaining ground. The purple glow is one power that I don't remember practising, only having a few broken, dreamlike memories of my menos days, but it's apparent that this was my favourite power. I could definitely see why, the cheetah is barely staying ahead.

 _'Of course'_ , I thought as the cheetah made a sharp turn, leaving me to slam into a sand dune, _'I can't turn very well.'_

Blasting my way out of the sand, I looked around, needing to regain my sense of direction. _'There!'_ I shoot off of after the cat again. _'Wait, why I'm I chasing it when I have Ranged Attacks?!'_ With that realization, I began to fire ceros at the retreating feline.

The clouds of dust thrown up by my near misses slowed it down, bringing it closer and making it easier to aim at, and after a glancing blow, it made another sudden turn. Digging my heals into the ground, I skidded to a stop and turned to continue after them, again charging a cero in my right . . . claw.

This time charging it for as long as I could without inhaling, I shot the cero ahead of the cheetah, causing an explosion strong enough to force it to stop abruptly so as not to run into the blast. This allowed me to come up behind it and _shove_ it into said blast. Sure, most of the energy was spent by then, but the ground was still molten glass at that point, making it a rather uncomfortable landing for the feline.

The cat pulled itself out of the semi liquid shuddering from head to toe and snarling like a chainsaw. It glared at me, then spoke. "Why are you just standing their? Fight me!"

I continued to watch it, and simply tilted my head to the side, curious of what it would do next. "What? Just going to stand their and stare? Looking down on me?" I continued to stair. "You think your better than me don't you!" If finally lunged, relatively sloppily thanks to the glass.

I casually sidestepped, allowing it to fly passed me, before answering, my voice sounding annoyingly like wraiths. "I . . . am sensing an inferiority complex."

It turned to me again, snarling. "Shut up! I'm better than your are, you silent freak!" it lunged at me again. This time I didn't dodge, rather letting the feline soar right for my mask, however, my purple glowing right arm slammed into their side at the last minute, sending the flying to my left. "You ask me to speak, then tell me to be silent. Kindly, make up your mind." I state, the last bit a whispering snarl.

"Shut up, shut up, shut up! Don't act like your better than me! Your not! Your just another hollow!" It snarled, charging me again.

'Ok, this kitty has some definite issues, I've barely spoken to them, and they're reacting like this.' I thought as I sidestepped, letting it shoot passed me. "If I may," I began in my whispering voice. "Are you perhaps, in your anger, projecting someone else onto me?" I tilted my head to the other side, one glowing eye raised.

"Take this seriously you arrogant *********!" It screeched in response, charging me _again_.

I sighed airily, and grabbed the cat out of the air. "You know, you may need a new strategy." I told it as it struggled in my grip, it's claws scratching at my arm, only for my regeneration to kick in and nullify the damage.

"Shut up!" it snapped.

I sighed and looked the hollow in the eyes, before beginning to inhale with enough force that the vacuum had a visible effect on the desert. The hollow seemed confused for a moment, before coloured mist began to leak from its mouth, and it's struggles renewed more viciously. It snapped, snarled and screeched in its attempt to break free of me, but nothing it did so much as loosened my grip.

Eventually its struggles began to grow weaker, and weaker. Finally, it stopped altogether, just glaring into my eyes defiantly, shivering as if in pain, which to be entirely fair, it may be. However, as the energy flow began to wain, I noticed a feeling in my gut near my hollow hole. A dull ache. I stoped the suction immediately, but the feeling didn't leave.

I noticed that my pulse felt slightly off, and their was a pressure at the back of my mind. I dropped the cheetah, turned and walked away, my mind racing. I new this feeling, what was it?

"H-hey, what are you doing?" I ignored the weak voice behind me. "Kill me." I kept walking. "what are waiting for? Coward! Can't even kill one little kitty? You *************! Your pathetic!"

I kept walking, unfocused eyes on the horizon. "Come back here!" I stepped to the side, and shoved the lunging cat to the right, sending it flying into the sand, leaving a notable skid. I kept walking, mind arace with blurred memories of my time as a menos, by mind roaring as I felt that something was undeniably wrong with me.

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 **AN: 1:19 AM, Nov 21st, 2018. Ok, I am disappointed. I could have finished this a few days ago, but slowed to a crawl for the last 30 percent. Still, I'd say this came out . . . relatively well. Not happened, but more than the last two chapters.**

 **Ok, so I now have over two dozen favs and follows, so I'm happy, and I got two new reviews, both being basic compliments. Thanks . . . how do you do a smile emoticon? Oh yah :) . . . right?**

 **Ok, that out of the way, hopefully I have another chapter ready by next Sunday. See you!**


	4. Reflections

**AN: 1:33 AM, Nov 22nd, 2018. Ok, what has possessed me to _start_ writing at 1:30 in the morning? I guess seeing that my total review count has tripled? Well then! Lets answer these!**

 **Daisuke SSJ: . . . (Checks Google translate) Thank you for the compliment(s)!**

 **gruntsbreeder: Thank you for the compliment, and the Cat is a just a nameless OC, although they may appear in the future.**

 **Raikaguken: Good guess, but not even close. I'd imagine the transformation in a Vasto Lorde would be like the ultimate adrenaline high, not that. Besides, it way to soon for a Vasto Lorde transformation, I don't like rushing to much.**

 **Mr Beaver Buttington: I know, I tend to rush and if my OpenOffice's spellcheck misses it, so do I. If this bothers you, please leave a list of my mistakes and I'll fix them next update.**

 **toadfist: More or less, although he never told it to stop, just made it stop without explaining. Also, same as above, would be a big help if you'd be willing to point out my grammar errors.**

 **BclassDemon: Yah, I agree that Arruruerie is rather overpowered, that's probably why they took him out so fast. Actually, if I was writing bleach, instead of having yammy show up at the end and fight the captains, I would of had Aaroniero sneaking around eating the other espada's remains and show up hyper evolved . . . say, not a bad idea . . . now I wish their was an evil smirk emoticon . . .**

 **On a separate not, my SI's ability is actually closer to a quincy's Letzt Stil. He can absorb reishi from the atmosphere and even break down solid matter, and drain an opponents reiryoku in order to raise his own. However, as will be explained during this chapter, their are some side effects.**

 **OK, that out of the way, lets get started.**

 **PS: beware, their are spoilers in this chapter for the anime, Charlotte. If you haven't watched that and want/plan to, watch out.**

* * *

 **POV: Unnamed hooded adjuchas**

I sat on a hill, staring into the distance, my legs crossed beneath me. Every few minutes I inhaled subconsciously, absentmindedly seeing how long I could go without breathing. Part of me remembered that I hadn't been very good at holding my breath . . . before.

As I looked out towards the horizon, a voice in the back of my head told me that I was only avoiding the issue. The incident with the cat hollow, and the aftermath.

When I had absorbed their energy, I had felt . . . something. However, I was so focused on the cat, and the feeling of my reiryoko reserves expanding, that I had ignored it, not noticing until it was already enough to trow me off balance physically and mentally. I had retreated, confused, coming here to try and figure out what this feeling, which has yet to fade, was.

I had probed my memories, what few I had, for anything resembling this feeling. I knew I had felt if before, but where?

The feeling resembled a stomach cold, but somehow that didn't feel right. I was a hollow, how could I get sick? Maybe the Cat had a poison ability? That answer seemed reasonable, but still felt wrong.

Summoning a mirror, I stared myself in the eye. I remembered doing this before, staring at myself in the . . . bathroom . . . yes, the bathroom mirror, thinking. Thinking about myself my life, my . . . character. Yes, it's their I discovered my odd habit of treating myself as a fictional character and considering my own "development". I snorted. How ironic, considering were I was.

With that, my thoughts took a lighter tone, pondering my dreamlike memories of my past, as boring and undefined as they often were.

After an undetermined amount of time during of this passed, I fell asleep, only waking up after I began to feel cold. Opening my eyes, I noted that a rather chilly wind was blowing out over the dunes, and with me on top of said dunes, it was little surprise I was so cold. Standing to my feet, I mentally commanded mt bandages to extend, before wrapping them around my body multiple times over, even as I walked to the other side of the dune to get out of the wind.

As I reached the bottom of the dune, I stretched out, feeling notably warmer already. I turned around and with a flex of my hand, sent a cero flying into the sand, forming a crater, which I proceed to walk over into. Finally, I buried myself in the still heated sand, using my tail to sweep it onto myself, until only my head remained uncovered.

As I settled down into my impromptu bedding, I stared at my tail. I'll admit, despite the sheer size of the appendage, I haven't made much use of it as anything other than a counterbalance when running. Even then, I probably haven't doesn't that to the best of my ability, either. With a sigh, or as close to one as this body can make, I pull the tail under the sand and close my eyes, getting lost in thought.

 _'Why was I sitting on top of that dune in the first place?'_ I thought. _'Oh yeah, I was thinking on that funny feeling I got. Where did that even come from?'_ It had only started once I began draining that cheetah hollow, but why? ' _I guess that the cat could have had poisoned claws, but that still feels wrong.'_ So if I wasn't going with poison, it must have been the draining.

I began trying to recall if that had ever happened before. The problem was, that was the first time I had drained a hollow since I evolved, and my memories of my time as a menos are even more poorly defined than my living memories, making picking out any details difficult at best, impossible at worst. Non the less, I had all the time in the world so I might as well do it.

Thus I dug into my shadowy memories of that waking dream/nightmare that was menos-hood. I remembered being in control of my thoughts when I first arrived, but loosing control to my instincts and base desires after I had a slight panic attack.

After said panic attack, I wandered around the forest of menos randomly, charging of in the direction of any reiatsu signature I felt and tearing into any opposition, leaving them depleted husks on the ground.

I felt a certain tension at the back of my mind at the back of my mind as I remembered this. For a moment I questioned why, before realizing I was disturbed by my own lack of control, fear off a loss of control being one of my own greatest fears, I remembered. Conclusion reached, I for the moment, ignored the off putting emotions and returned my attention to the memories.

As I searched my memories further for a justifiable reason for my feelings, I sensed an approaching presence still some distance off. Ignoring it for the time being I focused on my own thoughts(although I did begin to inhale deeply to top up my reserves).

Dream like memory after dream like memory flashed through my head, blurring together. As I focused on the memory of my feelings at the time of the events, I noted that immediately after draining a hollow, I felt abnormally violent and . . . instinctive. _'Of course, that could have been adrenaline . . . do hollows even have adrenaline?'_

The presence that I had noted earlier was now only a minute or so away, so I tensed my body in preparation, and began to count to pass the time until they arrived.

Just as I reached 94, a hollow came around the corner. The creature had grey/black, gorilla like body, with an oddly shaped head. "There you are, you ******* coward!" the creature snarled.

I groaned. "I knew you were, coming and haven't moved an inch. How am I a coward?" I stated dryly in my wispy voice, while moving my tail beneath the sand a subtly as possible.

"Then why are you hiding under the sand like an ostrich, huh?" It sneered.

"It's warmer under here." I responded. "And why are you even bothering to talk to me? Nervous to attack, or are you just bored?" I asked/taunted, my tone of voice sounding odd do to the whispering nature. I really wish I had a normal voice . . .

"Ha! Scared? You wish, coward!" He (I thinks it's male) lunches at me, mouth open far wider than normal biology would allow. However, before he even reached me, in tune with my earlier decision to use my tail more, I impaled him through the stomach with said appendage, leaving him struggling in the air uselessly.

"I guess I am a coward, after all, traps are cowardly." I spoke, pulling myself out of the sand, and standing to my full height, placing me almost twice my aggressors height.

"Sh-shut up!" he snarled. Seems like I'm on a roll, this is the second hollow that's told me to shut up in as many days . . . I think.

I Just looked at the hollow, who's struggling only got them more deeply impaled by my tails stinger, and noted an odd sensation. _'Can I drain using my tail?'_ I questioned myself. Part of me wanted to check and see, but remembering the last time I drained someone, I decided to stick to what I was (semi) familiar with.

Inhaling deeply, I began to slowly drain the hollow, this time focusing deeply on what I was feeling beyond the power increases.

First, there was nothing. Then, slowly, I felt . . . something. An emotion, or a phantom of an emotion. Anger? And, defiance? Why would I be feeling defiance? Unless . . .

I focused on the hollow I was draining, the look in its eyes. Ah, I see! When I drain a hollow, I feel what it's feeling at the time!

Testing my theory, I inhaled more powerfully, draining the remainder of the hollows reserves in only a few seconds, causing to revert to a menos even as I stumbled back from the rush of foreign emotion caused me to stagger back in slight mental shock(rather fortunately, as it prevented me from being buried under a recently reverted menos). _'Well, guess I'm right about feeling their emotions.'_

Shaking off the after shocks of absorbing another hollows emotions, I thought about my latest discovery. It was obvious that I needed to gain a greater understanding of my own abilities, I hadn't seen this drawback coming. _'When I was a menos, I was draining other, less aware menos. So, all I felt when I drained them was raw instinct. The only adjuchas I drained caused me to evolve, so I was to distracted to notice through the power rush.'_

Conclusion reached, I glanced at my tail, flicking it with a whipping sound. I had been ignoring the appendage for a while, I should probably figure out if their are any tricks to it, after all, when I first impaled that hollow, I felt like I could have drained it of power rather easily through the stinger. I guess it's not surprising, I've only been in two fights since I evolved . . . but still, this is Hueco Mundo, not a video game, their is no narrative device keeping me from running into someone out of my league, I need to get all my powers under heel before I do.

* * *

POV: Unnamed hooded

I stared at the orb of power in my hand, glowering. Slowly, the orb shifted into an egg shape, and then elongated further. Until it was about as long as my forearm, and only as thick as two fingers. It held like that for a moment, before the entire "surface" rippled, and the orb exploded, singing my hands, only for the damage to be repaired in a moment.

I grumbled under my breath, a truly alien sound, mind you, and brushed the dust off of my just healed hands. I inhaled deeply, closed my eyes, pointed my tail at the nearest sand-dune, and fired a cero at it. Watching the small hill of sand be blown away and calming my temper, I returned my attention to my project.

After I began to experiment with my tail, I discovered that I could indeed fire ceros from it, although the charge time and power don't have any noteworthy differences from when I use my hands/claws. Digging further into my own abilities, I found that I could shape the reiatsu in my tail into a blade of energy as long as the distance from my arm to my shoulder.

I, after this discovery, had begun to try to shape my reiatsu the same way in my hand, with no noteworthy results thus far. Oh, some attempts are more stable than others, enough that I can grip them, but they always destabilize or fade before I get them how I want them. That had to have been close to my five hundredth attempt.

Of course, I suppose the fact that I am practising with the extension and manipulation of my own robes, with hundreds of bandages shooting out in all directions and moving like tentacles. I have discovered that I can forcibly fuse them together, making a single piece of cloth, or make the unravel into something closer to thread.

I have also found that when I flow energy through them, I can tell exactly what shape they are, allowing me to identify when they are touching something by noting the change in shape.

The Final thing, thus far, I have found about these bandages, is that I can seemingly focus energy at there edges, causing them to take on a deep purple glow. I suspect that these edges are sharp, but it's hard to tell on sand dunes, and I haven't gotten into any fights since the gorilla thing. Not that I ever actively search out fights . . . alright, not since I _evolved_ anyway, but I was hardly myself when I did that!

I frowned mentally(being physically incapable of it at the moment do to the mask) at that thought, my mind turning back to my "Fight"("Coughslaughtercough" ) with the cheetah, and how I eventually tried to drain in. In light of recent developments concerning the power in question, that cat must have been feeling . . . something. Something that, for one reason or another, made me feel a sense of disgust strong enough to shake up my thoughts and manifest physically, lasting for a long time afterwards.

Now, that isn't something new, not to me, but I would have expected it to at least have been toned down after becoming a hollow. I have, in the past, been so disgusted that the feeling stuck around for days, afterwards. Now, the thing is, that it had to be something that disgusted me morally, and had to give me an overall feeling of despair and helplessness for one reason or another.

The last time I could remember feeling like that was when I watched the anime, Charolette. After the main character remembered the past timeline, specifically when he was told his little sister was going to be dissected. I had been morally disgusted and my mind had gone on a terade of trying to find a way to help them, ignoring the fact that they weren't real, and figure out a way to "beat" the mad scientists holding them captive in a way that seemed possible for them.

The following episodes hadn't exactly helped either. Ultimately I had found myself unable to keep watching past episode 9, and had never finished the series. Maybe seeing how it ended would have helped, but in the end I never had.

What was the point of that rant? I just need to reaffirm it to myself. Something that cat had felt had brought up the same emotions in me. Moral disgust, helplessness, despair. Now, that last two could be explained, they were probably just what the feline had been feeling, but why the disgust? Were had that come from. Had the cat been disgusted by itself? By me? But if they were the cat's feeling's why did it take so long for me to get over them? Were had that come from? From me? That would make some sense, it would explain why it took me taking my mind off of the indecent, but why had I felt disgusted at draining the cat, but not the gorilla? Was I disgusted because I had caused something else to feel fear and helplessness, or was my body simply reacting to their presence by bringing up the one other emotion I always feel when I experience that particular triad of negative emotion? I have no idea.

And even if I did know, would it change anything? I mean, now that I felt it, I'll be more prepared mentally, so it probably wont become an issue again, but still . . .

My thought trailed of as something on the edge of my senses caught my attention. A glimmer of vial feeling reiatsu. It felt . . . rotten? Not quite the word, but the best one I can think of.

Beyond the feeling of the reiatsu, were a range of other anomalies. The first was the feel of the approach. Usually when I feel a reiatsh signature, I see it as a candle, with the hollow being the whick. But this? If feels more like a wave moving out from its source. And the source itself itself had yet to enter my field of perception. This detail only makes it more terrifying, as the approaching power seems to be a flat wall of energy, meaning that the circle around it is so much larger than my perception that my range can't contain it. Whoever this is, they are orders of magnitude stronger than I am. At _least_ three.

You know? I just remembered, I suffer from a fear of wide open spaces, they just make me uncomfortable. Maybe I should go back to the nice, safe, encloses forest of menos, I mean, all I have to do is dig down, right?

* * *

 **AN: 11:34 PM, Nov 26th, 2018. Hello! I would have had this finished earlier, but I kept going to bed early(Ha! With my sleeping habits that means before 2 am . . .) and not getting any work done. Still, good to hear from you guys, I've only gotten one new reviewer since I started, who has placed a review for all three chapters, so I'll answer their questions now.**

 **Antex-The Legendary Zoroark: Yes, If you hadn't confirmed it from the next two chapters, he does operate in a vampire like fashion, leaving his enemies drained, but alive. When he drains a victim, he increase is own reiryoku level, and drains his victims. This drain is semi permanent, as it wont come back over time, but can be recovered by training, or in the case of hollows, eating. In the case of adjuchas, it can be especially brutal, as the adjuchas reverts to a menos, and as we know, their are no second chances at evolution.**

 **This also has the side affect of him feeling whatever the victim is feeling at the time, which can be a major drawback, as we saw last chapter, when it threw him off enough emotionally that it affected him physically and he couldn't maintain his current train of thought, causing him to run away. I hope that answered all of your questions!**

 **See you . . . some time in the next week, hopefully.**


	5. Fight for your Life

**AN: 12:03 AM, Nov 27th, 2018. I know I only published the last chapter a few minutes ago, but I figured I might as well get started on the next one.**

* * *

 **POV: Unnamed hooded Adjuchas**

 _'The forest of menos really is a relaxing place.'_ I thought for what had to be the dozenth time since I had returned down here several . . . weeks?(Time, as you can guess, is weird) ago. I wasn't joking when I said I was uncomfortable with wide open spaces, I hadn't even noticed how on edge I was before. Sure, I only came back down here to get away from that over whelming reiatsu, which I now believe to belong to none other than Barragan, but the fact is that I'm just more comfortable with a roof over my head.

Or course their are some drawback to being down here, for instance, I can't just bury myself in the sand if I want to sleep anymore, but that's a small drawback. After all, I can pulverize stone into dust myself. No, what has me concerned is the hollows here, specifically, how weak they are. Compared to what I'm used to, they're like individual drops of water. Well, ok, maybe not that major a difference, but my point stands.

Besides that, even If I have gotten rather good at suppressing my reiatsu, I still stand out down here, and the other hollows try to avoid me. That makes life . . . annoying. I hold no illusions, I need to evolve, or at least reach the apex of the power I can achieve as an adjuchas. And that . . . will not be easy, by any means. Especially if I want to both avoid any . . . painful emotional bursts, and not violate my rapidly returning moral compass.

Said moral compass, fortunately, has decided that it's fine to drain anyone who attacks me first, but as you can guess, down here were everyone's scared of me . . . that's a problem.

If I could avoid going to the surface I would, but I can't. Besides, I'm probably just being a coward, staying down here and training instead of actually fighting.

Sighing in resignation, I placed my hand on one of the crystal pillars to the surface, and with a powerful heave, began my assent. I was far more careful this time, remembering how the last time I had all but collapsed a pillar in my haste, and actually managed to make it to the top with only minimal damage to the pillar.

Rather than try to blast through the roof the way I did the first time . . . and the second time . . . I instead formed a blade with my tail and began drilling through, waiting for the sudden lack of resistance that would signify that I had reached all the way through the stone to the sand. One of the advantages of a tail nearly forty feet long(even If I need to wrap it around my waste a dozen times to keep it from hanging awkwardly.)

After a few seconds, I felt my tail break through, and pulled it out of the hole, watching as sand fell through the gap. _'How much sand have I already let into the forest?'_ I wondered absently as I began to widen the gap enough to fit through, to limited success.

After several minutes of clawing away at pieces of stone, I had finally gouged out enough stone for me to pass through. Getting through the stream of falling sand was harder, I got sand in places I didn't know I had, but I eventually clawed my way to the surface.

I emerged from the ground slowly, in what appeared to be a sink hole(no duh), and quickly jumped to the edge of said hole, getting out of the way before I could be pulled back down to the forest by the current. Staring out over the starless horizon, I wished for the . . . I've lost count, that's how many . . . time that I could sigh, the human gesture of exasperation seeming like a good way to release the tension I felt just being on the surface.

It's kind of ironic really, my fear of wide open spaces originated from my pore endurance, I knew I could hide, but I couldn't run very well, so if there was nowhere to hide I was nervous. Now, i can run so fast it's ridiculous, and I'm still scared . . .

I began walking in a random direction, having long ago given up on trying to maintain a solid sense of direction in this world, were the only constant was a moon that moved across the sky. There was not point in trying to find you way here, their was no landmark I could use, except for maybe las noches, but theirs no way I'm going near _that_ just to get a sense of direction.

I mean it's not like what way I'm going matters in the first place. I don't know anywhere I could go in the first place!

Coming out of my thoughts, I came to the top of a tall sand dune, and extended my senses, trying to get a feel for the world around me, and see if there were any hollows in my range. To be honest, their usually were, but I hadn't actively hunted since I evolved from an adjuchas.

Well, best go bait the hungry grouper's. Shame for them they'll be hunting a shark.

* * *

 **POV: Unnamed Hooded Adjuchas**

I had been in several fights since my return to the surface, most one sided in my favour, and to basic to be worth describing, usually ending in the first five seconds. Needless to say, I am arguing with myself over weather to be bored or relieved with the current status quo.

I mean sure, it's easy to win the fights, but as Saitama said, having overwhelming strength is pretty boring. And right now, everyone I've encountered has either been to weak to put up a fight or to strong to stand a chance against. Is it wrong to want a challenge?

I wished again I could sigh. It's just aggravating to not have that relief.

As I walked towards the location of a hollow who was currently waiting buried in the sand. Upon passing the monster, who was hidden under a dune to my right, it erupted from it's hiding place and threw a vicious punch at me. Raising my right hand, I caught the blow easily in a physics defying demonstration of might. I glanced at my attacker. A basic, if warped, humanoid creature without anything to stand out. Average in every way.

I rolled my eyes as it drew it's arm back and took another swing, which I avoided by leaning to the side. Before it could recover from it's over extension, I grabbed it's elbow, which I admit looked odd considering that the being was over forty feet tall, and with a quick flick, sent if stumbling flat on it's face.

Before it could even try it get up, I slammed into the back of it's head, forcing it several feet into the ground. I stabbed my tail into the back of it's head and began to drain it through said appendage. The tail lighted up with a light glow as the energy flown began.

I always started slowly, so as to keep myself from being overwhelmed by the sudden rush of emotions. Luckily, this time, all that there is is slight shock and confusion, both things I can easily crush. I drained the remainder of the energy as the hollow tried to get up, leaving it to fall to the ground as it reverted to a menos.

I inhaled deeply, feeling my expanded reserves of energy. I glanced at my tail again. The flow of energy from my tail was somewhat different from the energy flow from my "mouth". It's more controled, and honestly, I think I could flow energy back into someone I had stabbed with it. So if my mouths a vacuum, then my tails a syringe. But I haven't tested this. Haven't found someone I'd be willing to experiment on yet, and I have no idea what will happen when I do.

I narrowed my eyes, as I felt the slightest brushing of reiatsu. Was their someone nearby? Best to assume as such, better safe than sorry.

I went on my way, but I was somewhat tense. I couldn't feel anything anymore, but their was no guarantee that I had imagined it. I kept I slight pulse of reiatsu flowing to my hand, ready to form a cero at a moments notice.

I had to have walked for hours, keeping my senses peaked. Was their really anything there? I didn't want to be paranoid . . . no, I _needed_ to be paranoid, this is the world of the soul eating monsters! If you aren't paranoid, your stupid!

That thought passed through my head like a large stone hitting the surface of a calm pond, sending ripples. With that ripple, I had a thought. ' _If I flare my reiatsu, maybe anyone following them may think that I've spotted them, and raise there own to fight back.'_

I flared my reiatsu ever so slightly, and, sure enough, I felt another flare in response. If I could of smirked, I would have.

I spun to were I felt the flare of reiatsu, charging two cero's in my right hand(Claw?) and on my stinger-tip respectively. Since I started training my tail, I had found that it conducted my reiatsu better than any other body part, and thus, once I got the hang of it, I could charge cero's using it far faster than in my hand. Because of this, it was the first to be fully charged, and the first I fired.

The purple ray of death slammed into a dune and passed through it like it wasn't even there, forcing a rhinoceros-beetle like hollow with a double pronged horn and thick , wax-white armor to dodge backwards. I pointed the cero in my right hand at it, and snarled in my wispy voice. "Why are you following me?"

The hollow began to skitter around me in a circle, forcing me to turn with it, noting that it's "face" was level with my chest and it was taller than me if you counted the horn.

Beady little eyes locked onto my own, and the monster spoke it's response in a deep baritone voice. "How do you know I just don't want to eat you?"

I charged another cero on my stinger before I made my reply. "I don't know. All I know is your following me. Why?"

The hollow snorted, the action annoying me, if only because I wished I could do that. "Who do you serve?" it asked.

I raised one eyebrow. "Myself, at the moment."

"Would you bow to your better?"

"Only if they a _re_ my better." I narrowed my eyes.

"And what decides that?"

" . . . I won't tell you."

" . . . "

" . . . "

"Then were at an impasse."

"Yes." I agreed.

We stood there for several minutes, neither moving, the anticipation all but unbearable. I could feel it's reiatsu now, and it was roughly the same as my own, if not greater. I inhaled slowly, feeling my reserves reach there limit, and the energy I absorbed begin to overflow slightly.

The Beetle hollow continued to stare at me as my body took on a slight glow, signifying that I was now well over my current power cap. Finally is spoke. "I am Dyna Stene, servant of Barragan, god-king of Hueco Mundo."

With that statement made, we returned to our silence, Dyna circling me, me turning to keep him in sight. Finally, after several minutes thought, I replied. " . . . I have no name . . . and I will not bow to Barragan."

With that statement made, Dyna lunged at me, horn glowing with an insidious red light. I dodged to the side, firing both cero's into his side as he passed. However, while they left notable marks in his armour, they went no further, and were sure to heal in seconds, leaving the bug to barrel into the same sand dune he had once hidden behind. Upon his contact with the dune, the red glow around his horn shot off, cleaving to dune in two, the energy blade reminding me of a getsuga.

I formed a blade on my tail, and in a display of great control on my part, formed blades of energy around my claws, doubling their effective length. I charged the beetle as he turned, batting my claws at his eyes, causing him to duck just enough to let my blow hit the thick armour above his eyes, were it dug in, but didn't penetrate. He quickly charged and fired a cero into my chest before I could strike him with my tail, the blow hasty, and clearly meant only to drive me back, a goal it accomplished.

Taking advantage of the distance his cero had earned him, he re charged his horn blade, and spread his wings, buzzing forward far faster than I expected, forcing me to block with energy coated claws.

As we skidded back, I attempted to stab him with my tail blade, but the blade skidded off the armour, leaving a deep furrow, but no real damage. Well, I wanted a real fight . . .

As I was pushed back, I saw that he was about to fire the energy blade, and, not wanting to take that, I shoved myself off his sword/horn and formed a mirror last second, the reflective side facing me so as to leave the black side facing the blast.

Less than a second later the vile red energy flowed to either side of me, unable to break the mirror, though I noted that it was cracked by the after math. 'Note to self, work on layering mirrors.'

Before the beetle could back away from the mirror, I surrounded it by mirrors on all sides, forcing it into a space to small the properly manoeuvre, hoping that would restrain it for long enough for me to from a trio of ceros and recharge. Even if I still had a lot of energy left, I wanted to stay as close to full as possible.

By the time that the hollow smashed its way out of the mirror cage, I had fully charged three ceros and it from close range, the blows digging deep enough to draw blood, and one scoring a hit on it's left eye, causing it to stagger backwards. Seeing his dis-balance, I formed an energy blade on the tip of my stinger, and blurred forward, aiming my blow for the gap in the armour over the wings, hoping to bypass the armour entirely.

However, before I could reach my target, Dyna spread his wings and surged forward, horn glowing, slamming into mid air and taking my left leg off. I landed in a chaotic roll, trying to keep from striking my self with my own tail. Coming to a stop, I rolled over onto my back, noting A. my leg was already a quarter regenerated, and B. my opponent was charging a cero. In response I formed another three mirror between me and him.

I was glad for my preparation when the cero successfully blasted through the first on and severely damaged the second. Both remaining mirrors were then both reduced to fading shards in the air as the oversized bug crashed into, and through them on his way to me, horn again charged with energy.

Realizing that my leg, still only 3/4th of the way finish healing, couldn't support me, I lashed my tail against the ground with enough force to flip my body out of the way, though the appendage itself was cut off by the charging insect.

Hauling myself to my feet, I glared at the hollow, and coating my body in a deep purple glow, surging forward at far greater speeds than I had previously, slamming into the side of the still turned hollow, my tail already halfway recovered.

My forward momentum was enough to barrel the beetle over. I took advantage to wrap my bandages and almost fully regenerated tail around Dyna's body, and forced my hands into it's trap like mouth, forcing it open, and with a heave of my chest, began to inhale, instantly shooting to full blast. However, rather than the usual stream of energy, over the next few seconds I only got a few phantom wisps.

Struggling against my grip, the beetle spread it's wings once more and flew forward, gaining great speed, before smashing through a sand dune, were the extra resistance let it tear through my bandages and throw off my tail half way through, leaving me buried. 'Ok, so I have trouble draining Hollows on my level, good to know.'

Clawing my way from the dune, I quickly took surveillance of my surroundings. The beetle was hiding his reiatsu again. Great.

I jumped down from the dune, and charged a cero in both claws and on my tail, pointing them too either side and behind me to try and keep all angles covered.

Several minutes passed, and just as I was beginning to think that maybe the beetle had fled, I began to feel . . . off. My sense of balance was slowly beginning to go off kilter. Shaking my head, I tried to shake off the feeling, however, it only got worse.. _'what's going on?! What is . . .'_ I noted a buzz in the air. _'Infra sound? Should I scream? Or . . . '_ I inhaled with enough force that the sand around me on all sides was drawn into the vacuum.

Feeling my energy overflow, I fed the power strait into the cero's, firing them and spinning, so as to cover the maximum area possible, three continuous streams of power feed my the constant in-flow of energy from a semi literal whirlpool of air flowing into my maw.

My attempt to smoke out the bug was successful, if only because my cero pushed it out of the sand when it didn't dodge. Instantly stopping my vacuum, I charged the beetle, slamming into it head to head, grabbing it's horn with one hand and it's leg with the other, I pushed forward at great speed, dragging the hollow with me, passing what had once been the horizon in a matter of seconds.

As I pushed forward, I noted what appeared to be a pillar of stone in the far distance. Shifting my path ever so slightly, I took us both in the direction of the tower . . . no, wall of stone, which stood over a hundred feet tall and was three times as wide.

Slamming into it, bug-back first, we created a crater as deep as I was tall, the force enough to horribly crack Dina's armour(and shatter my arms, not that I showed that), causing the hollow to shriek in pain. I heaved him to the side, throwing the hollow to the ground with enough force that it skidded several hundred feet, leaving a trail of blood behind it in the sand.

I walked towards the hollow calmly, yet slowly, trying to hide how my arms were broken, and hoping that they would heal before the enemy's armour. I prepped my tail blade, and straitened my arm bones under the guise of straitening my sleeves. However, as I reached the hollow, I noted that, even as it wheezed in pain, it laughed.

"What is so, amusing?" I wheezed out in my airy voice.

The hollow turned to me and, in a voice that clearly said it would be smiling if it could, responded. "You took us the wrong way, you poor fool." He slowly, painfully, drew himself to his feet. "I called for reinforcements while you were in the dune. Now, their right on top of us!"

In the second it took me to absorb this, I felt three new reiatsu signature approaching us from the side, each one about half as powerful as me or the beetle. They would get here in less than thirty seconds.

Realizing that I had to finish this quickly, I turned back to the Beetle hollow and prepared to stab him in the eye with my blade, only for what felt like a cero to slam into my back with enough force to send me flying a great distance, bouncing right over Dina in the process. Snarling as I came back to my feet, I saw my assailant(s). A dragonfly like hollow, carrying a grub like hollow on it's head. The grubs mount was smoking, showing that it was the one who fired at me. Fitting, as it looks like a little canon.

The grub charged and fire another cero in the time it took me to blink, forcing me into evasive maneuvers to survive. As I did so, I heard Dina scream, "Keep him off me till I've healed!"

I glared at him for a second, before ducking under another cero. _'Looks like I'll have to run, before the he recovers and that last guy I felt gets here.'_

taking off away from the trio, I felt the dragonfly and rider follow right behind me, my speed not enough to leave them behind. As I ran, I had to duck from side to side to avoid the continues fire from that bloody maggot, allowing the duo to catch up. _'Wait a minute . . . !'_ If I could grin at the sadistic idea, i would have.

With no warning, the sky was filled with pitch black walls as I formed a half dozen of my mirrors right in the path of the bugs, and I was greeted with the satisfying sound of the meaty smack of a had on collision. With a twist of my hips, I spun around mid stride, sliding backwards to a stop.

Seeing the two laid out on the ground, I dispelled the mirrors and shot forward. The dragonfly, clearly the more injured of the two, tried to move, but was unable to get up with its half crushed face and crumbled wings, leaving it's grub ally to fend me off on its own.

I wove around it's fire, and upon reaching them, slammed my talon into, and mostly through the large worms side, dragging it with me even as my momentum carried me well passed the dragonfly.

Starting my vacuum, I noted that it was rather difficult to get the energy out of the maggot, even if the only thing it was feeling was shock and a little fear. None the less, the resistance grew smaller and smaller as the creatures reiryoku reserves shrank, partially confirming my theory that it grew harder the stronger the foe.

As the grub reverted to being a menos, I turned back to the dragonfly, who was now getting back into the air. I had a pulse in my limbs from the sudden onset of power, and I absent minded noted that that was the most energy I've ever gained in a single sitting.

Charging towards the dragonfly, who had just managed to make it into the air, I formed my tail blade once more, and with a vicious leap, I sliced through the wings of the bug in one swing, leaving it to come crashing to the ground. Landing beside it, I stabed it in the abdomen right above its hollow hole, and began to drain it. 'Calling for reinforcements wasn't the bast idea was it, huh, Dina?' I thought, feeling giddy and lightheaded from the sudden onslaught of energy, my overall reserves having doubled. 'Dyna . . . ? Dina . . . Dina!' I all but snickered at a thought, the sound coming out as a wheeze.

Even as I had the thought, I felt the source of my amusement flying at me from the side. I looked into the distance and saw my foe towards me at outrageous speed, wings a all but ablaze. I looked past him, the rock directly behind him on the horizon.

I laughed my wheezing laugh, and shoot off at speeds greater than any I had achieved before, breaking the world of the living sound barrier dozens of times over. Every pump of my legs left an explosion in my wake, every motion felt like it was lightning charged. Was this why adrenaline junkies existed? "Oooh, someones in the desert with Dyna . . . " I sang.

With an explosion of force I collided with the bug, completely cancelling out his own momentum. "someones in the desert I know-oh-oh-oh . . . "

I grabbed his horn as my own momentum carried us back towards the pillar of stone. "Someone's in the desert with with Dyna!"

We slammed into the rock, leaving a crater three times the size of the last one and reducing his armour to mere shards. " . . . matching 'im blow for blow, singing fee . . . "

I with a vicious twist of my wrist, snapped his horn off.

"Fie,"

I stabbed it into his side, "fiddly eell o . . . "

I slammed my palm into the horn, pounding it in like a nail.

"Fee,"

I slashed his eye out, "Fie,"

I wiped my tail across his face. "Fiddly eell . . . "

I lifted him up . . . "oh-oh-oh-oh . . ."

I threw him into the ground, and then walked towards his shivering, whimpering form, "singing Fee, Fie, Fiddly eell o . . . " I stabbed him with my stinger, and began to drain him, "matching him, blow, for, blow, hahahahahahaaa!"

As I drained the beetle hollow of energy, I felt a rush unlike any I had felt before, shivering from head to metaphorical toe in euphoria. I looked at my shivering talons, feeling the energy just beneath the surface.

I inhaled deeply, and then spoke to the open air. "I just increases my power by two hundred percent . . . " my gaze shifted to the last of Dyna's "reinforcements", who stared at me seemingly frozen in terror. "Make that . . . Two hundred fifty percent."

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 **AN: 2:28 AM, Dec 3rd, 2018. Ok, first of all, this is one of my longest chapters ever. Second of all, I feel it may be my best fight scene. A little wordy, but still. Not sure what else to say, so let's get to the reviews!**

 **Daisuke SSJ: (opens google translate) . . . Thanks!**

 **Antex-The Legendary Zoroark: Your welcome, and thanks! . . . I feel I got that backwards even though I know I didn't.**

 **Lazymanjones96: Ok (If you can be lazy so can I! :) )**

 **GGPD: Wait and see.**

 **Kay Starlight: well, thanks for the compliments, but . . . did you happen to mean, "anomaly"? If so, I haven't shown all his powers yet, he has one or two he has yet to find. And yes, he is going to have what amounts to a mental breakdown followed by an epiphany concerning his emotions. And no, the cheetah is not Grimmjow, though I do have plans for him later.**

 **Well, that get's the reviews out of the way . . . you know what, I'm sorry, but from now on im not going to respond to the reviews that are just compliments, I feel that it's just a waste of space and needless padding for the word count. That said, see you next time! . . . hopefully at a better hour, oy vay! I need to find a better solution to writes block than "bombard it with nervous energy at one in the morning."**


	6. A Pleasant Stroll

**AN: 4:09 PM, Dec 3rd, 2018. Ok, so I'm starting much earlier than usual this time, maybe that will fix my messed up sleeping scheduled . . . or not, since I like having afternoon naps . . .**

* * *

 **POV: Unnamed Hooded Adjuchas**

I starred across the desert, my mind a-whirl. I didn't even bother trying to guess the amount of time that had passed since I had fought the beetle hollow and his allies. Since then, I hadn't eaten . . . inhaled . . . you know.

After the high of the sudden power increase had passed, a weight had settled itself in my gut. During that battle, I had acted like a _savage_ , tearing my opponent apart with my bare hands, and _enjoying it_. And that scared me.

If I could do that at the drop of a hat, what else was I capable of? What horrors could I commit? I new for a fact that I could drain hordes of lesser hollows with a single breath, what could I do If I stepped into the world of the living and cut loose? Sure, the Shinigami would stop me, but after how long? . . . I suddenly have a new appreciation of the suffering of Bruce Banner.

Snarling, one of the few sounds that came out normally with my voice, I charged and fired a cero to the side, leaving a crater large enough to fit a small building inside of. I clenched my claws so hard that they shoot all the way through my palms and out the other side, the pain shocking me out of my depression.

Pulling my blade like fingers out slowly, I stared at the blood coated fingers. _'It's still red.'_ I noted. Many hollows had different coloured blood, green or blue, of brown, but my blood was still red. I'll admit, that thought was a little calming form me.

Inhaling deeply, I drew myself up from the spot that I've been sitting for who knows how long, and began to walk the dessert again. During my fight with the bug I had managed to find a part of hueco mundo away from the forest, meaning I couldn't go back down there until I found another way down. This means I'm stuck out in the open.

I glanced around, before reaching down to pick up a pile of sand. I threw the sand straight up, and waited to see which way the wind was blowing. I then went in the opposite direction, so as to stay down wind, keeping my reiatsu suppressed. I really didn't feel like getting in a fight, no matter how one sided, not right now.

* * *

 **POV: Rabbit Adjuchas**

I wanderer the forest of menos sniffing the air, searching for the long passed scent of the target of my search. Yes, it had passed through here. He had nearly lost me when he tunnelled back into the forest, but I had realized quite quickly what had happened.

The path that it followed was random, confusing, but I had sharp senses, and I knew how to track by instinct. As I followed the trail, I came to a section of the forest were I sensed great destruction. Pillars sliced to pieces, craters covered the ground, long trenches, and pits to deep to view the bottom of from my own position. I had come across several scenes similar to this one in the past. Training grounds.

The hollow I pursued had a unique ability that allowed it to absorb reiatsu from the atmosphere at a awe inspiring rate, something it used to it's advantage, as it could train far more constantly than other hollows, and thus not have to give in to it's baser instincts during battle, allowing for a greater ability to strategize. At least, that is what I felt, I could be grasping at straws.

However, this has spread their reiatsu around the area. I will have to walk around the outer edge to find which direction they went. What a hassle . . .

* * *

 **POV: Unnamed Hooded Adjuchas**

I snarled as my right hand was blown off entirely, my latest attempt at forming a sword out of reiatsu ending in a fiery blast as soon as I pumped more energy into the form. I could now form the blades, and they were even sharp, but they only had enough power to kill hollows less than a sixth of my own power, and barely made it through my own skin before breaking. And every time I try to put more energy in them, they do that. I guess that I still need more practice.

On a separate note, I have found that if I kill a hollow before I drain it, it doesn't revert to a menos. Curious, though not something I want to do to often. I know, that by my own ideology, that my draining is actually more amoral than just killing them . . . but less amoral than actually eating them . . . you know, I'm going to put away that though. That's the problem with living alone in an endless desert. To much time to think, you end up rambling at yourself . . .

I shook my head, trying to clear my thoughts. The past few . . . months, . . . years? it feels that long . . . I have wandered, trying to distract myself from the soul crushing boredom . . . I wonder if this is how stark felt? No, he had it worse. Maybe I could find him? No, he'd crush me without meaning to. Wait, would he even be there? How long were Starrk and lilynette alone for? What year was it even?

I glanced around, for a moment, then turned to look at the moon. _'I've been holding off on this for a long time.'_ I thought. _'I believe the events of bleach are set in the early 2000nds. If so, then what year is it relative to that? Do I have to prepare? Have those events already happened. No, Barragan is still alive, and still king, so I have time, but how much? Well, there's only one way to find out.'_

With a slight sense of dread, I called upon the one power that was always at the back of my mind, yet I had never once dared to touch. A black rift appeared in the air ahead of me, ominous and bleak, and I found myself dreading every step I took into the void before me.

* * *

 **POV: Unnamed hooded Adjuchas**

I stepped into the world of the living in a forest, surrounded on all sides by tall trees. I slowly looked around me, taking in the greenery. The way the light pierced through the leaves, the lichens hanging from the branches, the thick mat of moss and decay on the forest flore. I took it all in, breating the air deeply. Beautiful.

I had no idea how much I missed this. The shear _feel_ of nature, life, around me on all sides. Instead of that horrid dead world of sand and stone.

Shaking my head clear, I set off in a direction at random, trying to get a feel for my current location. I needed to find a settlement. If I found one, I should be able to tell what year it is, or at least make a very rough guess, and assuming I find a place that's up to date on the most modern technology.

I walked for several hours, wondering if the shinigami may have noticed my entry to the world of the living. Well, I'm suppressing my reiatsu to my limit, but there's no guarantee that will be enough, so I suppose I should be on guard.

I continued to walk, the journey vastly more enjoyable than my treks through the unending desert. 'If only Hueco Mundo had a few trees, it would be far more bearable, the rocks that resemble them really are a pore imitation, even if some of them are so strong I can't dent them.'

I wished for what had to be the millionth time that I could sigh. Maybe I could regain the ability by becoming an arrancar. But I'm not going to rip off my mask just for that, I'll at least wait till I reach the end of my natural evolution first. That thought completed for the thousandth time(I need a hobby . . .) I returned my focus to my surroundings

After several hours of this, admittedly very pleasant, nature hike, I finally felt a larger collection of extremely small reiatsu signatures, larger than the ones of the birds bugs and squirrels I had felt until now.

I began to rush, only to think better of it as my movements began to leave small craters in the ground, and slow down. 'Can I make a platform?' I felt the flow of reishi in the air, and with a mental command, found I could easily form a platform under my feet in the low reishi environment. Discovery made, I began to move at what was, for me at least, a reasonable walking pace, though the jealous race car driver would disagree.

Finally coming to the edge of the town, I glanced around, noting that the buildings were made of brick and wood. _'Not much help.'_ Keeping my distance, I continued to observe the small town. I saw newspapers, and someone on a bike, now that means that were probably at least past the early 1800's and the way people are dressed doesn't look pre 19 hundreds, but I'll admit that recent history was never my strong suit. Better to go closer and check the newspapers for a date.

However, before I could approach the town further that my current position in the tree-line, I felt a presence coming in my direction. ' _Now,_ that _, is probably the shinigami I was worried about.'_ the presence wasn't that impressive, weaker than the average Adjuchas, but I suppose that shinigami strong enough to be a threat would be the exception, not the rule.

I turned and began to walk casually in the direction of the approaching presence, while also climbing into the air. By the time I was face to face with the man, I was over a hundred feet up. The shinigami was, in a word, average. Average height, brown hair, brown eyes, a forgettable face, a standard black robe( _'What are they called again? Shihaksho?'_ ) with nothing distinct about him. Even his katana was lacking anything distinct, just a black wrapping and a bronze coloured guard.

"Shinigami," I spoke airily, nodding to him. He simply tensed in response, adjusting his kenjutsu stance. We stood across from one another, staring each other down . . . literally, in my case.

After ten seconds had passed, I spoke again. "Are you going to stand, and do nothing, shinigami? If so, the just leave. I have more important things to do, than simply stare at men with swords."

The shinigami simply adjusted his sword grip.

I sighed, then began to walk towards him causing him the tense further, before I walked around him, causing him the spin around. I continued to walk towards the village, when the shinigami leaped in front of me. "Where do you think your going, hollow!?" he snapped.

"Finally speaking, then?" I asked, before responding to his demand. "I am going, to find, a newspaper."

The shinigami looked baffled. "A . . . newspaper?" he shook his head rapidly, his expression going to angry. "Why would a hollow need a newspaper!?"

I simply raised on eyebrow behind my mask. "Haven't you ever wondered, how much time has passed, since you died? Or were you born up there?"

"That's none of your business!" he lunged at me again, only for me to grab his sword, and use it to lift him to my face level.

"You know, if you want me dead, you'd be better off calling for reinforcements and . . . trying . . . to . . . stall . . . " I trailed off, as a senkaimon opened about a hundred, no, two hundred feet to my left.(nearly forgot I'm 15 feet tall). I turned back to face the shinigami hanging awkwardly from his swords handle. "Good job, guess I'll have to come back later." I then dropped the shinigami, opened a garganta, and retreated as what appeared to be a lieutenant came charging out of the gate to soul society.

* * *

 **AN: 8:02 PM, Dec 6th, 2018. Ok, I had 75% of this chapter finished on the first day, and spent the remaining time trying to make it longer before I posted it. No dice. So, here it is. Now, for the reviews.**

 **First of all, thank you for any and all compliments, but as I said, I'm not going to give them there own individual reply. But, thanks ;).**

 **r3v3d3: If he ends up in a relationship with anyone, it will be the one that feels most natural to the narrative.**

 **Scaunders: . . . Ok, that's what I get for not rewatching bleach before starting this. Still, A minor mistake at least. Thanks for pointing it out.**


	7. Building and battles

**AN: 9:46 PM, Dec 6th, 2018. Ok, been an hour or so since I updated, and I've went through the first few chapters and replaced most, if not all, of the "menos" with "gillian" and fixed a few sentences and spelling errors I missed the first time. Hope you enjoy the chapter!**

 **P.S. If you don't agree with my inclusion of plants in this chapter, in the anime between 146 and 149, plants really are shown in the forest of menos. And yes, I've begun re-watching bleach since I started this.**

* * *

 **POV: Unnamed hooded Adjuchas**

I breathed in deeply, admittedly a default with my powers, and stared at the end result of what had to be several weeks worth of work at least, proud of my accomplishment. Before me stood the beginnings of a stone building. Though still a work in progress, seeing as it lacks a roof, I was still relieved to have this much done.

I had been inspired after seeing the village in the world of the living, and walking through the forests.

You see, after I spent that time walking through the forests, I began to feel . . . nostalgia, for lack of a better term. It was so beautiful, and I wanted to experience that again. But, I figured that going back to the world of the living was probably a bad idea.

After all, even if the earth was rather large, I'd rather not have to worry about shinigami attacking me,

seeing as they're flash-step lets them attack in the same moment they reveal themselves, and while I have improved my sensing by a massive degree since the Dyna incident, I don't want to risk a run-in with Soifon, no matter how unlikely that may be.

So, seeing as how I wanted to avoid the world of the living, if only for security proposes, and and soul society was _clearly_ off limits, I was stuck in Hueco Mundo with no answer to my problems. Thus, I wandered the endless white deserts, is a bit of a depressed state, until, eventually, I found my way back to the forest of menos. It's there, that I finally noticed the little details, specifically, one that I had always overlooked. Moss.

I hadn't even noticed the mosses when I last came here, but the patches here and there were undeniable after some observation. After some testing, I discovered that the moss mainly grew in area's were there had been fight, leading me to believe that the moss grew off of the liquid from the shed blood. After some experiments where I discovered that I could drain blood using my tail like a syringe, (and that I could drain my own reiryoku, which has some weird side affects, but more on that later), I tested using my own blood. Sure enough, the moss grew on blood coated stone, and seemed to sustain itself of the reishi in the air, until more blood was applied.

After words, I began collecting every kind of moss(and there are different kinds, I've found about eight-teen thus far) and bringing them back to this one little piece of the forest of menos where I have now built this little house(not rally little, like twenty five feet tall and having an internal volume of almost ten thousand square feet). Of course, before I began collecting, I had to get a better sense of the forest, meaning I had to map it(mentally, as I don't have any paper.)

so, I took a page from bats, and honestly seemingly half the series with a power-system, and tried echolocation. I'll admit, It took me several, long agonizing _moons_ (the only way to measure the passage of time here), to get it down pat, but in the end I succeed, now able to detect the basic shape of the edges of the sections of the caverns, using the basic shapes to tell my location. I now know over 45 caverns, and counting.

So, now more able to settle, I found myself a little out of the way cavern, which was a side cavern to a side cavern, and began to carve numerous stones into bricks to build this house, and then built a rock garden with sand, stone, and mosses feed with my own blood(yes, I admit that's a bit morbid, but super regeneration!) in the corner. Now all I need is a roof . . .

* * *

 **POV: Rabbit Adjuchas**

I had wandered white sands at random, my nose so overused that it felt raw from constantly searching for the same scent, and even if in knew it was an illusion, it was still painful. The one I had spent so much time searching for, had eluded me. He must have entered the world of the living, as his scent had, after such a long time crisscrossing the deserts, disappeared.

Screaming in aggravation, I collapsed onto my side, breathing heavy. If my mask had eyes, I'd be sure that I'd be crying. I had spent so much time trying to find that one hollow, but no matter how far I travelled, no matter what I did, I could never catch up. My only reward was corpses, and drained, immobile hollows.

Gritting my teeth and breathing deeply, I finally drew myself to my feet. _'Why am I even still doing this?'_ I thought. _'I don't even know what I'll do if I do find it! Why am I putting myself through this!?'_ all I knew was that after my encounter with the hooded hollow, I had been confused, and I didn't even know what about! So why, why had I even started trying to find it in the first place? Why? I didn't know. Was it instinct? I knew it couldn't be revenge, I already knew I was to weak to _hope_ to win, so why?

I just didn't know, all I knew was I was lost, and wanted, no, _needed_ a direction. So, I latched onto the first thing available. Didn't mean I was about to stop, though. I had spent ages hunting this one hollow, what I did when I found him, weather I attack it or attack it, I _will_ find it. Because that's the only drive I have left.

I inhaled deeply, and set out.

* * *

 **POV: Unnamed Hooded Adjuchas**

. . . you would be surprised how comfortable a bed of moss is, especially when it's the kind that's practically fur. I'll admit, my opinion may differ from someone who, you know, doesn't have an exoskeleton on top of the normal one, but for the time, I will stand by my assessment.

If one could not have quessed from that statement, I have all but finished my little building, albeit, I ended up making the walls thicker and simply making it as tall as the trees instead of making a roof. Not that I didn't try to build a roof, but materials in Hueco Mundo are . . . shall we say rare? And I was nervous a stone roof would just collapse. Not to mention how hard iwould be to fit toether.

You see, every block of my new building has a basic shape built into them that lets them fit together like puzzle pieces. I was inspired by memories of reading about aboriginal americans. Now which tribe was it? Maya I think . . .

The walls were, shall we say a reasonable thickness of . . . as thick as I was tall(I'd estimate 15 feet) . . . at the thinnest point near the top. To put it bluntly, my lack of confidence in my own building skill has caused me to shift through what had to be several thousand tones of stone, maybe more than a hundred (thousand that is, I just said that it was over a thousand, why would I go down?)

overall, It wasn't pretty, there were no windows, and the whole place was big and hollow(pun not intended), there only being a ground level, which was technically underground due to the fact that the foundation of this building starts two my-hights down, and I got tired Of trying to fill the whole pit I made in. I need to jump to get to the door . . .

Speaking of the door, I found some moss . . . lichen? Well, either way, it's long and hair like, which I have draped over the door. It's an idea I came up with when I couldn't make a door cover out of my bandages due to lacking anything to hook it on. I'm rather proud of it. In fact, I'm proud of the whole thing! I am probably the only home owner in Hueco Mundo, and Barragan doesn't count as he doesn't have a ceiling!

As I jumped up and walked out of my front door(more or less a sixty foot tunnel), pushing aside the hairy moss(Lichen?) I was greeted with another pleasant surprise. The little buds on some of my mosses in my rock garden gad sprouted into something akin to flowers. Admittedly more akin to the ones on weeds than the kind that attract bees, but the resemblance was there, little greenish yellow petals clear to see. _'If only I could smile . . . I have to say this is the first time I can remember being happy since . . . '_

I remembered the rather dreamlike memories of my time as a gillian. _'Yes, it was the first time I ran. I remember that I laughed like a manic.'_ Sure, I laughed and giggled during my fight with that beetle, but that was more giddiness than true happiness, and my self disgust after the event overshadows any joy I felt. And now I've ruined the moment, go back to focusing on the flowers, brain!

Shaking my head, I turned away from the flowers, and thought. _'I haven't gone for a hunt in a long time, nearly a full moon.'_ I looked to the ceiling, were I had drilled a small hole beside my roof along the outer edge of my house, was a stairway leading to said hole. _'Maybe I should go for a walk.'_

* * *

 **POV: Cheetah Adjuchas**

I snarled, surrounded on all sides by what appeared at first glance to be humans in white clothing. But, if one were to look closer, they would see the clear evidence to the contrary, first and foremost how warped some their bodies were, with other signs including bone fragments fused to their skulls, and holes going through their bodies.

"What do you freaks what!" I snarled at them, baring my teeth and charging my mouth with red energy.

The lead . . . whatever they were, a fully humanoid, male being with grey hair and a , stepped forward, pointed at him, and snarled, "You will serve Lord Aizen, or you will die, hollow."

I laughed. "ha! And who's going to kill me, you? Not one of you lot are half as powerful as I am, jack-ass!" Even as I said this I tensed my body, ready to fight.

The lead freak raised his head and looked down his nose at me. "True, but we were once nothing but ants next to the likes of you. Submit to our lord, and you may be made might, like us." he swept his arms wide and guestering to either side at his allies.

I scoffed. "Join _you_ for power?" why would I do that? But . . . if these guys are right about getting stronger . . . "How, how would this, Lord Aaren, make me stronger?" I stared at the lead whatever, eyes narrowed in suspicion.

"Lord _Aizen_ will make you like us, arrancars, by removing your mask and sealing it into a blade with his great purple jewel. You power will be compressed and made denser, offering you a host of new powers." The now named arrancar strided forward, arms spread wide like he was preaching. "all our lord asks is your obedience, and he will give you power, purpose, and protection from the savage wastes!"

Now I was tempted. If I could grow strong enough, maybe I could . . . no, there was no way, even if I'm ten times as strong as back then, even if I could become much stronger by joining this Aizen guy, then I still wouldn't risk facing that _thing_. That decides, I regained my senses. "No! I will not bow to anyone, ever! You here me, I am my own master!" I re tensed my body, ready for their attack.

The lead arrancar nodded his head "So be it." then to my shock, he disappeared, only to reappear next to me in a flash. I barely managed to dodge the blow before a sword struck were my spine was just a second before. Before I could counter attack, another one of the arrancar, this one with a gorilla like body, appeared above me, and threw a punch that formed a notable crater when it hit the ground. With a snarl, a turned and ran, trying to put some distance between me and the group, but every few seconds or so, one would appear in front of me with a flash, and either take swing at me or fire what appeared to be a weak cero.

When one of the demi ceros hit me in the leg, I was forced to come to a stop, the group surrounding me. "You should have accepted our offer when you had the chance, fool." the leader said, forming a proper cero on his finger tip.

I snarled, facing the leader, and lunged forward with a sudden burst of speed, managing to get my teeth into his throat before he could respond. I jumped back as the other arrancar scattered in all directions, firing cero at me, most of which missed due to the shock of the arrancar.

I darted my head back and forth, thrying to keep track of them. _'dammit! I don't know how many of them there are! I should have counted them!'_ I lunged after one, only for them to disappear in a blur. _'Dammit!'_

I glared at the arrancar, now surrounding me on all sides again. Today was turning out to be a real pain in the ass . . .

* * *

POV: Rabbit Adjuchas

I listened to the sound of conflict on the other side of the dune's. Even if I was blind, my other senses let me paint a shockingly clear picture of the ongoing battle. I had to say, it was rather impressive. Of the original twelve arrancar, the cheetah had managed to kill four thus far. However, he was tiring quickly, and the remaining arrancar were rapidly improving the synergy they had lost with their leaders death at the hands of his own arrogance and the cat's fangs.

In other words, the big cat was in big trouble. Now the question was, should she interfere? They had been following the cheetah's reiatsu signature since they realized that it was that one hollow who had actually gotten away from the hooded hollow during a previous fight. But their was no guarantee that the cheetah even knew anything more than her. So, should she interfere?

As she felt a fifth arrancar reiatsu begin to fade, she decided. She had come this far, and in for an inch, in for a mile. So, with a surge of speed they shot off over the dune, kicking of a cloud in their wake. Barrelling over the hill, naught but a blur, they crashed into one of the arrancar, shifted so that said arrancar was underneath them in mid air tumble, and jump-kicked them into the ground with enough force to create a notable cratter, throw up a cloud of dust, and collapse the arrancars rib-cage.

The cloud of dust spread over the area, the rabbit hollow took advantage of her enemy's being brought down to her level, blind, she took advantage.

* * *

 **POV: Cheetah Adjuchas**

'What?' I thought as one of the arrancar was taken down by a new riatsu behind me, a cloud of dust surounding me from behind and obscuring my vision. As I whirled around I noted that several of the arrancar had backed away from the cloud, but that one of the ones who didn't get out of the cloud had just disappeared.

As I stood their, I felt another reiatsu vanish, and another, as a new hollow dashed around unseen do to the dust. By the time that the dust had cleared, more arrancar were dead, and another two were injured.

I darted my head around so fast that I looked like one of those bobble head toys during an earthquake, trying to catch a glimpse of the new third party. And when I did, I was _pissed_. They were a freaking _rabbit_. You know, "What's up doc,?" that kind of rabbit. And now, A FLIPPING _BUNNY_ , had taken down as many as me in a third the damned time!

"Ok, now it's on." I snarled, throwing myself back into the fray. Now way was I letting some dumb, big eared bouncing buffoon not half my size show me up!

* * *

POV: Unnamed Hooded Adjuchas

I paced back and forth in front of the remains of my last victim, my mind a-whirl. Now before I explain why, let me give you a brief summary of my time in hueco mundo.

I woke up as a Gillian in the Forest of Menos, and temporarily lost my mind. While in the forest, I discovered my ability to drain other hollows, and proceed to drain every other gillian I encountered. Now while I admit that my memory is not the best, I am confident in my assessment that it was somewhere between 60 and a hundred gillians, and one adjuchas before I evolved.

After I evolved I wandered the wastes of Hueco Mundo for an indeterminable amount of time, draining any hollow that dared to attack me. Over that time, my initial power after evolution tripled. Then, I was scared underground by Barragan, who, I realized, had a reiatsu signature so vast that it covered at least a thousand times as much area as my own.

After getting over my fear, I returned to the surface and continued to hunt, my power eventually growing to five times what is was when I fled from Barragan. I then got in a fight with a Adjuchas by the name of Dyna . . . something, and emerging victorious, I increased my power by another another two hundred fifty percent.

After that, I had drained over a hundred adjuchas class hollows, and a few gillians here and there. Overall, I was twenty times as strong as I was after that battle with the beetle and his allies. After reaching such a level of power, I grew curious and entered the world of the living, trying to find out what year it was relative to the start of bleach, which I believe to be somewhere between the year two thousand and two thousand five.

After being chased of by a shinigami lieutenant, I returned to hueco mundo, and, feeling nostalgic and wanting a greater level of comfort, I sought to create a place I could feel at home, ultimately building a house, more of a tower really, to live in, only hunting when the work grew tedious.

Soon, having finished my tower-home, I came to the surface and began my usual hunting strategy of wandering around and waiting to be attacked by some fool who would realize I was suppressing my reiatsu to feel weaker, and then drain them.

However, after draining several hollows, I noticed something. My own reiryoku wasn't going up. I tried again, draining another hollow. Nothing. Nothing at all. No increase in power whatsoever, it simply bled out of me the same way that reishi did when I absorbed past my limit. Time after time I tried again, and, after the dozenth time, I accepted reality.

I was powerful. Over eight hundred times as powerful as I was when I first became and adjuchas. I could create craters the size of small cities with a single attack, and blast over the horizon in the time it takes to blink. I am . . . less than a third of my minute estimate of Barragans power, and I have reached my limit.

* * *

 **AN: 9:23 PM, Dec 11th, 2018. Ok, that took longer than I hoped. I guess the fact that I was watching bleach and other anime instead of writing didn't help . . . well, I got it out, so I guess that's what matters. Now, I will be answering reviews.**

 **evo123457: You probably should have read the entire thing before you asked that, I'm pretty sure I already explained this in a later chapter, but the reiterate. He does remember his time as a Gillian, but their foggy, surreal and dreamlike. The reason he reacted the way he did right after evolving because, from his own perspective, he just woke up from a weird dream where he was little more than an animal, had an adrenaline rush and then found out it was not a dream. I'd say the scream was justified.**

 **BClassDemon: Well, a hollow mask is just that, a mask. He does have a mouth under there, so in theory, he could still eat and drink if it was small enough to fit through the gaps. But if he just turns it into reishi, which would happen under an intense enough vacuum, it will just taste the same as the air, just thicker.**

 **TheHiddenLettuce: Yah, probably not going to happen. Wouldn't trust the shinigami enough at the moment, so the "tell the Shinigami about Aizen" plan would require him getting to know a shinigami high enough in the hierarchy to protect him well enough to protect him with his life, and that Aizen be so far away that my SI didn't need to worry about apsolute hypnosis to make the other captains here something completely difference. And even then, theirs no guarantee that they'd believe him, he has no evidence after all.**

 **And now, to address the the _elephant,_ in the chat room . . . **

**Blaise Welshman: . . . Ok, so, after I saw your comment, I was kinda amused. I had seen your story before, but since it didn't really look that interesting, I didn't bother to read it. But after I saw your comment, I felt I should give it a try. Now I'm on chapter 9,and I have to admit, thus far, your story's pretty good! I've never actually seen someone take that kind of route before, not totally anyway. I'd say your main problem is, again, that your story doesn't look that interesting at first glance, and seeing as how FF.N has over 2 million fanfics, judging the book by the cover becomes necessary.**

 **Now, reading you fanfic also caused me to emphisize with someone. Specifically the comic character designers from DC and Marvel who designed Etrigan and ghost riders respectively. Now if you don't get what I mean, allow me to explain. Both etrigan and ghost rider are demons bound to human hosts. So, one always looks like a ripoff of the other. But, they were published in the same month, the character similarity's are uncanny, but in the end are just a coincidence. And now, I know how the character designers for these guys felt. Because I had my SI's entire power-set planed out by _JULY_ , but I had several other possible ideas to and didn't decide on one till October, and now someone beat me to the punch with an absorption based power by just over two weeks, making me look like that jerk who just ripped someone else off. Seriously, this is driving me up the wall. And if I had read your story when I first saw it, I could have gone with one of those other ideas, and this wouldn't have happened! Honestly, is this karma for saying your story looked boring the first time I saw it? Beating my head against the wall here.**

 **Well, enough ranting at British people(I assume their British anyway, their a Welshman and all . . .) about my failures, time to start the next chapter. See you all next time. Hopefully it doesn't take as long.**


	8. Lost in the Uselessness

**AN: 1:16 AM, Dec 12th, 2018. Ok, Cane-Jian, you said a few hours ago, that you were going to start the next chapter, get off youtube!**

* * *

 **POV: Unnamed Hooded Adjuchas**

After I realized that my power had stopped growing, I froze. For hours, perhaps days I stayed their, collapsed on my knees, my thoughts moving, but going h, as if reluctant to take any action. Eventually, I rose. It was a robotic motion, painfully slow, and seemed to lack any energy. Even as my lower body tensed beneath my weight, my upper body remained limp, my shoulders and arms hanging loss and my head tilted to one side.

The first step i took was slow, almost laborious. The next all but a stumble, the one after that could barely be considered a scoot. But, slowly but surely, my movements gained greater speed, and grew more natural. Soon, my pace became a run, and then a jog, and then eventually a run. Things only escalated from there. My pace turned from a run, into charge, my figure naught but a purple glowing blur with a dust cloud forming in its wake.

I surged forward for heaven knows how long, eventually coming to a stop before a semi literal mountain of stone, with pillars of rock on all sides. I looked around, breathed deeply, then turned my gaze to my hand. I place my hands together as if praying for a moment, then pulled them apart. Between my hands formed a rod of energy which, seconds latter formed into a blade. It was a simple weapon, really, just a blade and handle with no guard and a moderate curve, the whole thing about as long as I was tall. I looked around again, and then reached out my senses. Once I was sure their was no parts of the forest of menos within hundreds of miles, I let my self break.

I clutched my sword, an energy construct I had spent moons trying to master, with a grip that would crumble a steel beam like toilet paper and crush boulders like a cupcake. I screamed a scream so loud that any stone in my vicinity would shatter, and my own eardrums burst, only to heal and burst again. My eyes were filled with tears of self loathing, and my mind was a sea of rage with a calm, cloudy sky named disappointment, which saw no point in breathing howling winds to justify the seas rage.

My lungs, for the first time since I became a hollow, were ragged. It hurt every time I inhaled to both scream and refile my reserves. I sent out waves and pulses of reiatsu every time I so much as twitched, every time I swung my sword, I sent a tear through the ground unto the horizon. The logical part of my mind whispered that my every action was pointless and would only bring unnecessary attention to myself. Every other part screamed back that it didn't care.

I barely noticed when the mountain of stone crumbled. I barely noticed when the last of the sand drained into the crevices I had formed. I barely noticed that I was now standing on stone instead of sand. I barely notice the clouds of dust that blotted out the sky for miles. And still I raged.

If you had asked my even the day before if I would be all that choked up about reaching my limits I, would have denied it, but that would have only served to prove how poorly I new my own mind at this point. And even afterwards, all I knew was that reaching the limit of my evolution had hurt me in some way I didn't even want to think about at the moment.

And after my tantrum was through, I returned to just standing there, drained both physically and emotionally, the ocean of my mind drifting on its own currents aimlessly.

* * *

POV: Unnamed Hooded Adjuchas

I lay on my bed, trying to sleep. Sleep. Hah. That's one thing I've been doing to much lately. I must have spent what amounts too weeks lying on this soft-moss-covered stone sleeping or trying to sleep. I haven't gotten up once.

Since I reached my limit, I seem to have lost some spark in myself, some fire I didn't know I was fuelling. I've always told myself, don't get cocky, don't become overconfident, don't trust your own ability. But apparently, that never sank in, and when I reached my limits, I felt as if I had betrayed myself. In all my time in Hueco Mundo, I have never faced a challenge I couldn't overcome with my own power.

I guess, some part of me came to the conclusion that would always be the case, and believed that I would surpass Barragan. And I know that that that's not the case. Barragan said it himself, his power is _god like_. But just cause you know something consciously doesn't mean you accept the subconsciously.

Even now, I keep having thoughts like, "You still have ability's you haven't mastered," and "You still have powers that you haven't even tried yet." but I just can't seem to find the strength to move forward. And that's only making me more impressed. Back when I was . . . when I was human, I was an expert of thinking of inventive ways to use powers, impressive techniques, etc.

But since I came to Hueco Mundo, my mind . . . it hasn't been the same. It takes me hours of thought just to come to the same conclusions that once would have taken me hours. Like I'm constantly half asleep. My mind just doesn't work _right_. And that has to be the most annoying thing here. I mean sure, my awareness of my surroundings was never this good, and I don't think I would have been able to fight this well with my old thought process, but everything that is not related to battle has . . . degraded.

Eventually, I began to drift off again, images passing through my mind in the disconnected manner that I usually have right before I nodded off. However, to my brief annoyance, something disturbed me.

Now, I choose the cavern I built my home in, because it was small, and out of the way relative to the other caverns. In fact, this caverns entrance is one small hole in another out of the way cavern, meaning that there's a whole nother empty cavern between me and other hollows. So, hearing someone talk in my cavern, especially while I was trying to sleep away my woes, was . . . shall we say aggravating.

" . . . back right now, Inaba! I've put up with this for long enough! Either stop right now, or I, I'll stop you!" A voice that seemed somehow familiar sounded.

"We've come to far to stop now."a calm, young sounding, female voice responded.

Ok, I've put up with this long enough! If you go in there, you'll be sucked dry and end up looking like a raisin!" I got to my feet and walked to the door That guy in there's a total monster! I refuse to let my flipping travelling companion go into the same room as a monster that can collapse mountains by accident!" I got to the door and began to walk out, pulling aside the curtain.

"I will not let you throw your life away like this! You wanted to find this guy? Fine! Here he is!" I stood behind a large grey cat with blood red spots, who was currently speaking to a large rabbit who appeared to lack eyes. "Now let's go! Before he realizes . . . were . . . why are your ears pointed above my head instead of at it!" Now the cat's voice sounded nervous, and he began to turn his head to the side to look behind him, only for me to grab him by the scruff of the neck and yank him into the air with a yelp.

"I'm trying to sleep." I spoke right into his face, which I noted was about as terrified as a mask could get. Actually, come to think of it, my voice sounds like wring wraith, so I guess my voice is kinda scary.

"N-now look what you did, Inaba!" the cat, which I could now see was a cheetah, _squeaked_ , as if hoping I wouldn't hear as he squirmed in my grip.

"I can't see. I take offence to that statement." the rabbit responded deadpan. I almost snorted, before looking back at the cat.

"Don't I know you?" I asked causing the cat to shiver and freeze in my grip. "I do, don't I? Your that one who I chased down after I caught you torturing . . . I think it was a frog." The terrified feline could only nod slowly. "I thought so." I dropped him. "Well, I'll let you go this time. If only for the heartwarming concern you showed the rabbit. But If you must stick around my cavern, at least go to the opposite side of my house from the door. I'm tying to sleep." I turned around and and walked back into my house.

* * *

 **POV: Tsuki Inaba(Rabbit Adjuchas)**

I listened as the Hooded Hollow walked back into his house, the flap of moss hanging over the door sliding into place behind him with an audible hiss across the stone. I then directed my attention to my companion, who was laid out on the ground shivering in fear.

I'll admit it was somewhat amusing to hear the usually hotheaded and vicious hollow reduced to a shivering wreck on the ground, If only do to how out of character it was. Of course, it became apparent ages ago that he was scarred to death of the hooded hollow, no matter how much time he spent denying it.

"Come on Zrill, get up, your not dead." I spoke to my still shell shocked friend.

Slowly, he raised his still shivering head. "Is he gone?"

I nodded. "He's gone back in side, don't . . . " I trailed off as the hooded hollow came back out, causing Zilly to freeze up again.

"One more thing. DON'T damage my rock garden. If you do, I'll test to see how fast you recover from crippling injury." he then turned and went back into the building.

 _Thump._

I returned my attention to the cheetah. Huh. This is the first time I've ever had a hollow faint one me. Guess he was even more scared of the Hooded Hollow that I thought . . .

* * *

 **AN: 1:51 AM, Dec 14th, 2018. Ok, so a short chapter, but I did only spend two days on it. Well, two days and thirty minutes, but still. Not much to say about this chapter. Mostly just the SI suffering a breakdown and depression, and the cheetah and rabbit finding him. I couldn't think of anything else to add without making the chapter feel bloated.**

 **Now on to the reviews! . . . Ok, never mind. I'll admit, I'm somewhat disappointed I only got two reviews. I was hoping that the end of the last chapter would get a bigger reaction, but hey, I got like 8 new Faves and a dozen new follows, so theirs that. Well until next time. Hopefully the next chapter will end up being longer.**


	9. Talking With the Blind Moon

**AN: 5:26 PM, Dec 14th, 2018. Ok, time to get back to work.**

* * *

 **POV: Unnamed Hooded Adjuchas**

As I lay in my bed, I wished I could groan. Unfortunately, that was a sound that my voice, at least at the moment, could not produce. The reason for my desire. Two blather-mouths that have taken up residence in my cave. One unwillingly.

I felt a slight flash of amusement when I remembered how the cheetah, "Zilly," seemed to freeze up every time I was nearby. I'll admit that the few times I've come out since they arrived, I've gone out of my way to sneak up on him. One time he jumped sixty feet strain up when I started talking out of nowhere right behind him.

Deciding to see what my . . . guests were doing, I climbed to my feet and pulled off the moss blanket and the sheet made from my own bandages(coming up with that took longer than I'd like to admit.) I walked through my house, passed the table, which was just a flat topped stone, and came to the sudden rise that was the hallway to the door.

I jumped up the sudden plateau and walked through the exit. The duo of annyances were sitting off to the right of my door, arguing about something. Last half-a-moon it was about how they should leave, "Zilly"(I'm convinced that's a nickname . . . ) arguing for and Tsuki arguing against.

I couldn't hear what they had moved on too now, but I didn't really care. I just felt like scaring the cat again. Luckily, this time his back was to me making it all the easier. Even though I wasn't really paying attention to their conversation, I noticed the change in Inaba's tone, meaning she had heard me even though I was walking on the soft moss. She found his reactions funny to, even if she was to stoic to admit it.

As I came withing a single stride of the cheetah, who I could now tell was complaining about the humidity of the cave, which was probably my fault, I spoke. "I happen to like the moisture." my voice sounded more creaky than airy because of how fast I said it. To my own shock, the cheetah actually _yowled_ in shock and jumped straight over the bunny and head first into the wall of the cavern, which was abnormally flat because that was the side I took the stone from.

As I watched the big cat slide down the wall and resisted the urge to laugh, as it made me sound like like a runaway pressure washer, I noticed the rabbit was pointing her ears, which were free from her mask, right at my face. I looked down at her, the motion making a rustling sound. "Do you need something?" I asked.

She continued to stare . . . listen . . . you know what I mean, for several seconds, before speaking. "Why don't you have any torches?" she asked, tilting her head to the side.

I raised an eyebrow under my mask, not that you could really tell, and responded. "Torches? How would I make torches? . . . and why ask in the first place?"

"Because, Zilly was complaining that it was to dark in here. Then, when I told him to make a torch, he was to scared of making you mad to do it, so he started complaining about the mosses and the humidity."

"Oh. So, he knows how to make torches?" I asked, sitting on the ground.

"Yes, he does. Most . . . ", she was cut for by a returning wildcat.

"I was not scared! I just didn't feel like trying to put them high enough on the wall to get good lighting, that's all." The cat tried to reason, while also trying to pretend he wasn't scared of me. He really should have given up on that after the third time I made him faint . . .

"As I was saying," Tsuki continued, "Most hollows learn how to do it when they first get to Hueco Mundo. It's not really that hard."

"Really?"

"Yes. You know how to make a reishi platform?" Not really all that concerned with were she learned the word "reishi", I nodded, before realizing my mistake and answering.

"Yes, It's rather easy."

"Well, you just need to take something, and force a lot of reishi into it the same way you gather it to form a platform. The reishi bleeds out as a blue flame. Most hollows use the branches of crystal trees, since it's a lot harder to do with rocks."

I nodded again, the mentally complained about how often I mess up with that. Just because I know she can hear me nod doesn't mean it's not rude! "Huh, I never new that. You said you learned that . . . what is the proper term for someone who hasn't become a menos?"

"Base hollow, I'd assume, and yes, I, and most hollows do. Interacting with other hollows is still common back then, since your still hunting humans and not each other."

I nodded for _the third flipping time_ , smacked myself in the forehead, and answered. "I guess that explains it. I don't really remember being a base hollow."

"Really?"

"Yeah, the earliest thing I remember is being a menos, unless you count my memories from life. Not that either of those are that clear . . . "

"Hmm, then is it possible that you were eaten when you were alive and just took over when the hollow responsible fused into a gillian?"

"That's one of my theories too. Not that it really matters. I'm here now. That's all there is to it." That conclusion reached, we fell into a comfortable silence while the cheetah stood beside us awkwardly, obviously wanting to say something but too scared to. Eventually, the cat just got up and walked away, leaving us to the silence.

I'd estimate that about an hour had passed before I spoke again. "Why."

The rabbit's ears twitched, before she turned her head in my general direction. "Why what?"

"Why did you spend so much time, searching for me? From what I understand, you and the cat have been searching for me since you met, and you at least were doing it long before. So. Why?"

The rabbit turned her head away(I wonder why she started doing that. Was she not always blind?) and remained that way, giving the impression that she was staring into the distance. "I don't really know. After we first meet, I felt . . . horrible. Confused, weak, helpless . . . My whole world had come crashing down." seeing that this was going to take a while I sat down.

"My memory of being alive is cloudy. But I do remember I was weak. I was blind. I was frail. People were always taking care of me. Looking down on me. Telling me I was helpless and that I only survived as long as I did because of my parents mercy. From what I understand, they were my parents servants, jealous of my "comfortable" life."

"Eventually I got sick, and died. Before I died I hoped I would be able to see in the after life . . . but my hopes weren't answered in the end. I was still blind . . . but I was far from frail. My ghost could shatter trees with a single punch! I terrified the servants." She seemed smug. "Felt like I was paying them back for all the times they told me to go back to my bed because I was to frail to be standing so much. I might have been stronger if they had just let me do something . . . might not have died when I did . . . " she trailed off. She didn't say anything for a minute, then continued.

"Eventually, I hollowfied. After that it's all . . . well, I suppose the proper term is "a blur", but to me it's more like a crash, a bunch of bad sounding random noise. I don't really remember what I did. I remember . . . chewing, and not wanting to think about what I was eating, talking to other hollows on . . . hunting strategies, one going through the trouble of teaching me that fire trick, cutting me of every time I tried the tell him I was blind." she chuckled at that, and remained silent for a moment, probably reminiscing. "Eventually, I got caught in a hollow feeding frenzy and became a gillian."

"It was horrible. All these voices in one head, all trying to crush the other ones into submission. All of them trying to _erase_ me. I didn't want to go to sleep, helpless. Not again! So I fought them, and, in the end, I came out on top. I was the voice in charge. Everyone else, disappeared."

"Finally, I was the strongest. Finally, I had power. It didn't matter that I didn't have eyes, I had hearing so sharp I could tell exactly where things were and a new sense better that what I was _told_ sight was like. I was . . . happy. I didn't have to listen to people who claimed they new what was best for me. I didn't have to lay around doing nothing "for my own good". I was the one in charge now, and either you were afraid of me, or you obeyed me."

"Looking back, I never even considered that I wasn't the strongest thing in the world. That their might be something out there, that could still treat me like that helpless little kid. Then you came along, and I was just another simple gillian to you. A slightly larger snack than normal. I was left barely able to move on the ground, as all of my . . . light, I guess walked away in the body of someone else. They felt like what the servants always said a star looked like."

"Afterwards, I was your light collide with another star, one brighter, if only barely. But, in the end you absorbed him to, and became all the brighter for it. I wanted to follow that light. I didn't know why, but I wanted to see that clear power again."

"So, I gathered the strength to pull myself over to my former pack, and ate them one by one. After that I could stand, barely, and I slowly returned to my normal strength. I started eating other gillians, and eventually, evolved. I pulled myself to the surface, found were you had come up and, began to follow your trail."

"Every time you came into contact with another hollow your reiatsu trail grew a little larger. But, it also got . . . smother. More controlled. Even when you were scared, their was a certain clarity to it, like a bell. Even when your reiatsu was all but crushed under the rotting stars, I could still make it out. So I never stopped following your reiatsu, even when I encountered brighter stars. Until, eventually, I found you."

We returned to being silent for a moment, before I spoke. "You know, I just asked you why you hunted me, not your whole life's story."

I was treated to the rather amusing sight of the rabbits ears turning bright pink through the white fur(proving that hollows could indeed blush) and her covering her mouth with a paw, caughing embarrassedly. "Sorry."

"Don't be." You could hear the amusement in my voice. "After being stuck in my own head for so long, it's nice to hear a voice that isn't your own thoughts, miss Inaba." I noted that She practically whipped her head towards me, and I realized that that was the first time I had refereed to her something other than "rabbit" or "the bunny" out loud.

I yawned. "I don't really have that great a memory either. My memory of life is indistinct. My memory of my time as a gillian is foggy and dream like, indistinct. The thing I remember best is . . . " I formed a mirror. "staring at myself in a mirror, thinking. Somewhat ironic. The only thing about myself I remember perfectly . . . is, my own face."

I looked up at the hole in the ceiling. "Somewhat ironic really. Not my name. Not my home. Not my beliefs. Just my face, which is now covered by a mask. Like a bad joke. Something so useless, is the one thing I remember perfectly. Of course, I suppose I was somewhat vain, not that I ever bragged while alive. I suppose you wouldn't understand, but I loved the way my hair shone in the right light."

I sighed. "Of course, that's not the reason I spent so much time staring into a mirror. Just a pleasant side effect." I formed a mirror right in front of me and Tsuki for emphasis. I did it while I reflected, staring at myself, thinking of things I had read, things I had done, things I wanted to do. All while looking myself in the eye."

I looked to the rabbit, who had both her ears pointed directly at the mirror intently. "What?"

She pointed one ear at me for a moment, then returned it to the mirror. "It's not vibrating right."

I raise an eyebrow under my mask. I knew that no one would be able to see it, even if I wasn't talking to a blind person, but it was instinctive. "Hmm? What do you mean."

Tsuki got up from were she was and walked/hopped over to the mirror, and circled it a couple of times, ears always pointed right at it. Placing a paw on it, I felt a slight ripple flow through the air. "most of your mirror isn't vibrating. At all. This part," she patted the reflective side of the mirror, "Is fine, but the rest isn't vibrating at all."

I stood up from where I was sitting and walked over to her, and struck the mirror on the black part. "Did you feel that?" I asked.

"No, I heard the air move as you swung and your hand vibrate, but I didn't feel any vibrations through the mirror." she responded. Curious.

I continued to strike the mirror over and over again, each time asking if she heard anything. Each time I got a negative. "Hmm, maybe if I break it?" I struck the mirror with a solid slap this time, feeling the resistance it put out disappear as the black part vanished and the reflective part crumbled. "Did you feel anything that time?"

"Felt it shatter, but there was no vibrations, it's like it crumbled under it's own weight." Inaba responded.

"Hmm . . . Miss Inaba, I believe that I need to get a better understanding of my powers." I looked her in the general area you'd assume her eyes were. "Care to help me?"

* * *

 **AN: 10:40 PM, Dec 17th, 2018. Hello folks! I finished this chapter faster than normal. I guess that's because I'm better at writing out explanations, and things I had planed in advance, like Inaba's back story. Of course, she's kinda a rip off character design wise, but still. Now, I just need to decide on and actual name for the cheetah, "Zilly" is just a nickname, and I haven't decided on his real name.**

 **In the meantime, I'm trying to figure out the bleach timeline. It's, confusing to say the least. And I'm not talking how Shinji was listening to a jazz record "110 years ago", no, that is ultimately irrelevant. No, I mean how he gathered the espada.**

 **First of all, he's still in his soul society disguise with the glasses and such when he defeats Barragan, but, according to Zommari, Aaroniero is the last of the "First Generation." I assume this means him and the Privaron are the first espada Aizen made, even before he concored Las Noches, as Barragan is still on the Espada. We also know that their was at least one middle generation, as we know that Nnoitra was once the eight espada, and that Szayelaporro was on the espada at the same time. Now Dordoni said that he knew that he would become obsolete after Aizen got the hogyoku, but, we know that, again, Nnoitra has been on the espada for a while, ad he outright said, "how many YEARS has it been?" to Nel, indicating that it had been a considerable time. I could also mention how Aizen was in his post betrayal outfit when he "saved" Harribel, but seeing as how all that means is he changed his clothes, brushed his hair and took off his glasses, I don't really think that that makes a valid argument for him picking her up post betrayal.**

 **I'm sure you guy's can see my problem. Even If this doesn't factor into the story, I still want to know! _Sigh,_ I guess I should get strarted on the reviews, I've made this AN long as it is, and I got a lot!**

 **To all thoes who made comments about needing to become an arrancar to get stronger: True, but. He will never become a Vasto Lorde, and thus never reach the "Benchmark", Barragan. Even if he know he can still become an arrancar, so can Barragan.**

 **. : Yes, I can definitly see how he could come across as "too human", but, that's kind of the point, just look at the story summary. Also, thanks for the compliments, but could you please point out the inconsistencies you mentioned? I don't like it when I have plot holes . . . Or did you mean that him being too human _was_ an inconsistency? Anyway, I regards to his powers, I know I gave him a few, but I feel that it can be justified. Not that I'll justify it here, I'll do it in later chapters now that Tsuki's got him back into researching how his powers work.**

 **TheHiddenLettuce: I wont claim to be a psychologist, but I felt like it was the appropriate reaction for a being who's just found out that their end-goal was beyond their reach. And I'm kinda proud of this chapter, as with real life depression, it's easier to pull yourself out of it if you have a drive, in this case his curiosity and subconscious drive for entertainment and companionship.**

 **Antex-The Legendary Zoroark: Yeah, I like scaring people and animals, and I have a rather quiet walk so it's easy for me. Also, Hooded Wraith, huh? Not a ban name, may use it as a title . . .**

 **Gerden360: Don't ask me how Vasto's work, I don't know either . . . or was that a rhetorical question?**

 **. . . Ok, this AN has now added . . . 646 words, I'm ending it now, bye.**


	10. The Hunter and the Prey

**AN: 12:27 AM, Dec 18th, 2018. Ok, let's start the next chapter!**

* * *

 **POV: Unnamed Hooded Adjuchas.**

I glared at my mirror, aggravated at my lack of progress. Since I began looking into how my mirrors actually worked, I had come to several conclusions, but making use of those conclusions to make the power more effective has been a bit of a pain.

When I first developed the power, I didn't really notice anything weird about it. The Mirror formed, it had a reflective half and a half that was pitch black, and it was the black half that was durable. Now I knew that the reflective half seemed to be generating the black half, and that the black half acted more like a repulsive force than a physical barrier.

In light of this, I have been trying to change the shape of the black part, if only to make it thicker, by pumping more power into the reflective part. Thus far I have only succeeded in tripling the strength, and even then it take five times as long to form, so I might as well just layer five and get a better result. Wishing for the heavens-only-knows-how- big-stupid-number-of times I could sigh, I dispelled the mirror for the time being, settling for the amount I had accomplished and moving on to my energy constructs.

While yes, I had gotten to the point I could form a blade on a whim, any other shape seemed to allude me, most likely do to my focus on forming swords above all else. Thus far the only other thing I can make is a staff, which is what I made before refining it into a sword.

Right now, I was trying to make an axe. Rather basic, but every time I try to add a blade to the end of the staff, I end up making the whole construct destabilize and explode, sometimes taking off my hands. If I become an arrancar, I'm keeping the regeneration.

Muttering angrily under my breath(my voice making it come out like some occult chant) I waited for my hands to grow back as I stared at the moon. Right now I was about a five minutes walk(A fifteen minute walk for a human) from the hole in the desert that came to my cavern.

What? Thought I'd practice in my cave and risk bringing down the roof? No way, I know I have more firepower than the average nuke, I'm not that stupid. I happen to like having a roof above my head. Of course, Tsuki and Zilly are still in there, they only leave to hunt every once in a while, and even then, its only for a few hours.

I got up from the ground and stretched out, annoyed that my regeneration didn't help stiff muscles, and began to jog in the direction of the entrance. Half way there, I noted that a certain cheetah was on the surface and moving distinctly away from me, Inaba nowhere to be seen. _'Well they don't always hunt together, but it's still weird to see him alone . . . '_

Part of me wanted to go see what he was up to, but another part of me argued that he'd just run off. Honestly, I know it may sound insulting be he reminds me of my mothers dog. Always running off as soon as I showed up unless someone they were more comfortable with was right there.

Considering for a moment, I decided to just go and see what happens and continued my approach. I noted how his reiatsu shifted to feeling, shall we say jumpy after my approach was noticed.

He positioned his body in such a way that it would allow him to bolt(not that that would help if I did try to hurt him). His eyes were narrowed, but nervous.

"What do you want?" he all but snapped, doing an admirable job keeping the nervousness I felt in his reiatsu out of his voice.

"Just to talk." I . . . breezed? How do you even properly describe my voice? Banishing that rouge thought I focused on the thought at hand. "I've been meaning to try to get to know you better for a while, but you always avoid me."

"Yeah, and your _brilliant_ first impression doesn't have anything to do with that." well, the annoyance just blew away the nervousness.

I felt the urge to snort, but again, lacked the ability. "True, but I didn't exactly approve of you torturing your opponent." Not that I have any place to argue anymore . . . "I do think that one should kill their opponents in the quickest way available, assuming that it isn't a duel of some sort," man the way my vice wheezed at the end of that sentence made me sound like an old man. "but," I continued. "That doesn't mean that I don't know how hard it is to remain . . . stable when in battle."

The cat tilted his head. "Are you . . . apologizing?" he asked, sounding a little dumbfounded at the idea.

I though for a moment before answering. "Are your hind legs digitigrade?" I asked.

"What the hell? What's digigraded or whatever mean!" he more demanded then asked. Seems his fear becomes forgotten when he's mad. Maybe it's the "fight" overcoming the "flight"?

"It means you walk on your toes, so the answer is yes."

The cat gave me what I think was a dirty look. "And couldn't just sat "Yes", why?"

I tilted my head to the side. "Because I have spent ages alone, in a desert, with no-one to talk to, and now seek any entertainment I can find."

"Now I really want to smash your face in."

"Don't bother, you'd hurt something." the cat went of murmuring under his breath about "pain in the ass know it all hooded jack-asses" and grumbling at my joke/morbid statement.

"Alright." the Cheetah grumbled. "What do you want to talk about?"

 _'Your actual name.'_ "Well, for one, why were you attacking that hollow so viciously when we first met?" I asked.

The red spotted feline glanced away from me, before sighing dramatically(stirring a flash of envy from me) and after a seconds thought, answered. "I have . . . anger issues, and a bit of a grudge against the world. Don't ask why! I only really began to calm down after I started to follow Inaba." he looked away from me again. Maybe he was trying to ignore who he was talking to, or pretend I was someone else?

"And why did you start to follow Tsuki-chan?" I asked, hopefully using the Japanese honorific correctly. "Zilly" got a confused look in his eye for a moment, but shook his head and replied.

"Well, when I first met her, she saved me from a group of human looking hollows who called themselver air-cars or something like that."

 _'What? Did he just . . . no, think on Aizen's imminent approach_ latter _.'_

"After we kicked the bleached-towels collective asses six ways to soul society" inventive joke, "she walked . . . well, more hopped, up to me and says, "you fought him" and I'm wondering, what the hell shes talking about! So, I ask . . . well, more demand an answer really, looking back on it I was a total ass . . . or at least a bigger one then now. Where was I?"

"Demanding an answer."

"Oh right, so I say, "what the hell you talking about?" forgoting the "are", and she tells me she was looking for this one hollow, and that I had survived a fight with him. Well, there was a handful of hollow like that, so I asked which one, and she says, "the one who breaths in your reiyoku". I nearly had an . . . an . . . what do you call it when your brain tears from thinking to hard?"

"Do you mean an aneurysm? If so, then an aneurysm is . . . " he cut me off.

"No no no, a stroke! I mean a stroke, I nearly had a stroke because, who the flipping hell would what to find that monster! . . . no offence! No offence!" he went back to nervous.

"I am an abnormally power iteration of a soul eating monster, possessing enough raw power to reduce a small city to a pile of rubble and and smash hills flat by just being there. What else would you call me?" I droned.

The cheetah coughed twice in . . . embarrassment? Shame? Well he coughed in some form of negative emotion, and continued in a rather rambly manner that honestly reminded me of my own speech patterns. Am I rubbing of on him?

"Anyway, I tried chewing her out . . . don't look at me like that! I mean I yelled at her! Not actually . . . well you know, over trying to hunt down . . . well, you, because your the most freakishly powerful hollow I had ever met, so I told her she might as well go to Barragan and _ask_ to be flipping killed. She didn't listen and went off to find you, and I followed her trying to . . ."

The cheetah froze mid sentence as we both felt a flash of reiatsu. Coming from the entrance to my cavern, specifically. Two reiatsu's, one seemingly muted. One was Tsuki's, and the other one, the muted one was . . . _'a Shinigami!?'_

I froze for a moment, as I registered the reiatsu signature as being that of the shinigami. One more powerful than either the one I encountered in the world of the living, and the one I glimpsed through the senkaimon before I left.

Not bothering to wait and find out if "Zilly"was following, I charged towards the entrance to my cave at speeds that would make a fighter jet green with envy. I slowed down as I approached, so as not to overshoot, and jumped into the hole.

The short period of time I was airborne seemed like hours, as I felt the Shinigami's reiatsu blur around the cavern around me, Inaba's doing the same. It seemed they were fighting, but the shinigami was clearly stronger from how she was on the run. The shinigami's reiatsu, even now, felt dull, and I was certain that they would be hard to notice if it wasn't for how no other hollows were nearby, and how hard they were fighting.

Finally landing after what felt like an eternity, but was actually closer to five seconds, I collided with the moss covered stone flooring of my cavern, and with a vicious surge of my leg muscles shot of in the direction of the Gotei 13 member.

I appeared in between the moving shinigami and the still fleeing Inaba, who I noted had a still bleeding injury on her left side. Not bothering to say a thing, I whipped my tail at the reaper, the appendage glowing a deep purple. However, to my shock, the black blur shifted mid flight, landed feet first on my tail and used it's momentum to put distance between us, landing several hundred feet back(and leaving a notable streak through my moss).

Eyes narrowed, I stared at who had to be my favourite minor character in bleach, and possibly the greatest threat I had ever faced. A tattered shinigami garb, a mass of the same furry moss I used for bedding covered in recovered hollow masks, one mask worn over his own face. _'Ashido Kano, the lost shinigami. This. This is bad. This guy was definitely stronger that Rukia, and he was never so much as strained in_ any _of his fights.'_

I braced my body, noting that the cheetah had entered the cavern, and that he immediately began to head for Inaba. _'Zilly and Tsuki can't handle someone on this level! I need to get him out of here, or those two will get torn to pieces!'_

I charged at the shingami, forming a staff in my right claw at the halfway point between us, however, before I could reach him, he disappeared in a shunpo, reappearing several hundred feet to my left. Slamming my tail into the ground tip first, I allowed my own momentum to pull me in a circle and threw the staff straight at him like a spear, forcing him to roll to the side, and letting the spear/staff give my house a new window.

Lunging at him while he was still off balance, I rotated mid air and, again, used my tail as A whip, however, he preformed a break dance-like maneuver, standing on his hands and lifting them as my tail passed, letting it pass underneath him uselessly. Furthermore, he nearly clipped it with his sword as I drew it back.

It was less than a full instant after he got his feet under him that he disappeared in another shunpo, reappearing right above, forcing me to block his attack with my right arm, which I lost in the process.

Retreating quickly and forming a cero on my tail-tip, I blasted a wide shot at him, selection a greater AOE in exchange for less power. However, when the wave of power dissipated, he was standing behind a clear barrier. _'And of course he knows that kido. And I ruined my flooring for nothing . . . '_

He again vanished into a shunpo, but I was beginning to get more used to the speed, and moved to intercept his next attack, a left handed punch slamming into his midsection when he resurfaced behind me. He flew back, almost into the far edge of my cavern, but rotated mid air and planted both feet on the ground, leaving more furrows in my moss flooring.

However, before he could get back into the battle, I closed the distance between the two of us. Suddenly extending my robes bandages, I quickly wrapped as many around his body, no matter how sloppily, as possible. Ashido successfully fended of quite a few of them, extending appendages are actually the single most common ability of hollows after all, but the nigh hundreds of threads overwhelmed him before he could regain his footing.

My entire body now taking on a deep purple hue, I shoot off like a pellet from a rail-gun through the exit of my cavern, dragging the tangled shinigami behind me, where he bounced around on the ground. I raced through large empty cavern that stood between my home and the rest of the forest of menos, feeling as the soul reaper cut himself free, neither the high speed nor the constant collisions with the ground doing anything to stall him.

Feeling him cutting through the last few bandages, I wrapped my tail around him as a last resort, feeling his sword dig into it as he tried to cut himself free. Knowing I only had a few seconds, I severed the remaining bandages then whipped my tail, and thus the shinigami, at the entrance to the cavern, sending him flying back into the main body of the forest of menos. As I neared the entrance, I shoot a cero at the roof, causing a cave in that covered said entrance even as I passed through it, leaving me and Ashido cut off from my caverns.

* * *

 **POV: 3rd Person**

The hooded wraith stood across from the lost shinigami, who even now was climbing to his feet, casting off the last few pail violet bandages that still clung to his body. The last of the bandages removed, he fell into a kendo stance across from the hooded hollow, who himself braced his body as if he was ready for a harsh collision, tail coiled around his body with a glowing blade of energy on the tip.

The two remained like that for ten seconds, before the hollow attempted to speak. "Why . . . " the shinigami shot forward in a shunpo, appearing above the adjuchas in a downward swing, which was intercepted by the tail-blade. The two ground their swords together for a moment, before both backed off, returning to their standoff.

The hooded hollow quickly formed two rather short blades(relative to it's own body size) in either hand(one recently regenerated) and sank into a rough, but passable defensive stance. The hooded hollow remained in that position for only a few seconds, before it spread it's arms wide and inhaled with all the force of a super vacuum, the sudden suction catching the grim reaper off guard, forcing him to stab his zanpakuto into the ground lest he be pulled towards the adjuchas.

Even as he kept up the constant vacuum, he slammed his hands together wrist first, formed a two handed claw, and charged a small cero on each finger tip, again sacrificing power for area of affect. Dropping the suction, he immediately fired all ten cero's at Ashido, who dodged, ducked and weaved expertly between them, at one point taking off his mask to block one he couldn't avoid.

The very instant that the the deep purple rays of energy stopped, the red haired reaper vanished and appeared directly in-front of the hollow, where he fired off a gout of purple flame, a sokatsui, point blank into his face. Blasted head over heals comically, tail tangling up as he flew, the hollow crashed into the wall, leaving a deep indentation.

As he dragged himself back to he feet, he ran a clawed hand over his face, noting several new points were the blade like fingers caught on something, and that they came away red. His masked was cracked, and he was bleeding. Before he could fully register this, he was forced to block another overhead strike from Ashido with his tail, but the hastily formed blade shattered under the pressure, forcing him to dodge to the left.

Skidding back even as he formed a cero, he prepared to fire, but before he could Kano faded out of existence and re-materialize directly behind him, cutting a deep gash into the hollows side, only to receive a blow to his own ribs from the Adjuchas tail, sending him flying himself.

The hooded adjuchas, charged at the shinigami, wrapping the bleeding gap in his left side with his bandages, the grim reaper retreating.

Following directly behind him, the hollow remained doggedly on the shinigami's heels, not giving mind to the fact that the reaper had already showcased speed far in excess of his own until it was too late. By time the hollow realized what was happening, he had been lead into a group of quarts-tree's with only minimal gaps between them, and unsure footing.

The shingami, with a final powerful leap, slammed into a tree foot-first, kicked off it, and flew through the air like a projectile at the off guard hooded hollow. Sloppily rolling out of the way, but still taking a nick to one leg, the hollow inhaled sharply, throwing the shinigami off balance for a second, but only a second, as he masterfully regained his balance and jumped straight up, avoiding the hollows follow up tail whip.

Now the shinigami had every advantage, the close set tree's of stone preventing the hollow from either reaching top speed or being able to use it's tail to full effectiveness, forcing him to stand in one point, blocking or dodging Ashido's attacks, and allowing the agile shinigami to disappear into an effective hiding place every time he tried to counter attack.

Finally, after taking multiple small injuries, that, though healing quickly, seemed to cause him a great deal of pain, the hollow froze for a moment began looking around at such speed that it was a miracle he didn't snap hi own neck, and inhaled more powerfully then ever, firing off ceros, seemingly at the random.

Ashido had a relatively easy time dodging these attacks, keeping a certain distance from the hollow so as to minimize the effect the suction had on his movements. After several minutes of seemingly non-stop firing, the hollow fell to it's knees, whole body shaking and raggedly drawing in breaths, though it never exhaled.

Ashido, for the first time since the battle started, spoke. "Are you finished?" he asked in a tone devoid of emotion. The hollow looked up from where it was crouched on the ground, movements still shaky. Raising his sword, Ashido prepared to strike the final blow, but was cut off.

"Wait." the word came out not as one of the hollows usual airy whispers, but as a snarl. However, it was not a snarl that was angry, or scared, more one that contained a modicum of authority, just enough to make the reaper pause for a moment, before the hollow spoke again in it's regular voice. "Please, listen to me, if only for a moment."

Ashido stood their motionless, a statue, for what seemed like an eternity, the hollows eyes never leaving the eye-holes in the mask over Ashido's own face. Finally, robotically, Ashido sheathed his sword, but remained in a Iaido stance, ready to cover the remaining distance with shunpo and finish the fight in an instant.

The hollow seemed relieved and after waiting a moment to see if the reaper would attack, slowly began to shift his body until he say lotus on the ground, body seemingly deflated. "Thank you. I have, for a long time, had, a question." the hollow began, eyes now seemingly distant and tired even as they remained solidly one the shinigami's own. "But I had none to ask for the longest time, as I felt that other hollows . . . simply would not understand." Ashido noticed how when the Adjuchas went to blink, he did it one eye at a time so as to keep one eye on him at all time. Smart.

"Shinigami, since I first gained consciousness in this damned dimension, I was off. I had the shattered remains of my living self's conscience, fragments of his memories . . . I was lost. I had no mouth, rather than eating I drained hollows of reiryoku and drank the reishi from the air. Part of me felt . . . morally superior to those around me for this, like I was better because I did not need to eat the souls of others in order to survive."

"But, then I thought more deeply on things such as life, and death, and came to the conclusion, that memories . . . memories are more important than even one's life, and suddenly the way I turned them back into Gillians painted me a far greater monster than any other I had met, for I took from them two things more valuable than their lives. Memory . . . and sapience."

"So, I justified to myself that I still held the moral high-ground, by thinking that I could put their power to far better use than them, devote it to a far more just cause, and tried not to think on what I had done beyond killing my foes before draining them from that point forward. I wanted to have an actual impact on the world, a positive one, and for that I needed more power."

"But then,, then I reached my limits, and suddenly everything I had ever done was for nothing. I was to weak to actually do anything. Certainly I'm strong, but when compared to even the things I have seen with my own eyes, I am still to weak to actually make a difference in this world. And then, my eyes opened I realized that I didn't even know what I wanted to change!" the hollow choked bakc what sounded strangely like a sob. "I have been wandering through this world, damaging the one part of myself I want to protect, not even having a justified reason for doing so!"

The hollow, for a moment so brief he nearly missed it, looked to the ground before his eyes were back on Ashido's own. "So I've wanted, for the longest time to ask a question, and had no one to ask. Other hollows wouldn't understand, and I had no one else to ask. Even when Inaba told me she still had some feelings, I feared to probe deeper. So now I will ask you, reaper. Was their been any point, in the first place?"

Ashido stood frozen for a moment, considering. Considering the answer, considering whether he should answer, and considering all the ways this could be a trap. Finally he spoke. "I don not know. That is for you to decide." and struck. Shooting forward in shunpo, he stopped mere feet from the sitting hollows face, and swung his katana at the mouth-less mask . . .

Only for the hollow to catch the blade between the thumb and forefinger of it's right hand. "Thank you . . . for listening." It said, eye's closed, a slight amount of liquid at their sides.

Ashiso, overcoming his shock in an instant, twisted his sword to the side, the sudden motion enough to cut off the hollows thumb, and back off to a save distance. Watching the hollow rise to his feet in a smooth motion, he realized all to previous signs of weakness were now gone. The hollow noticed his tension, and spoke.

"As I said, I can take the reishi from the air I inhale, did you honestly think I _can_ exhaust myself? No, I just used a little trick I learned to make other hollows think I was vulnerable. That is not to say I asked you that to trick you. I honesly wanted an answer to that question. But, now, would you like to see why I launched all those cero's in the first place?"

Not waiting for an answer, the hollow formed a sword in either hand, and one on it's tale. But instead of attacking, he began to spin in place, rapidly becoming a glowing purple blur. Then, as Ashido watched in horrified fascination, the hollows swords began to grow _longer_.

Withing seconds the swords were hundreds of feet long, each one _dicing_ the numerous tree's round them to small pieces, even as they grew longer. Finally, the hollow began to, again, inhale with enough force that the lost shinigami was forced to dig his sword into the ground to maintain his footing, and the blocks of still-air-borne crystal were pulled towards the hollow, forcing Ashido to cast a bakudo to protect himself from the stones.

Then, to Ashido's mounting horror, the entire cavern seemed to shake, with the sound of stone grinding against stone echoing through his very bones. Glancing up, Ashido couldn't now see it clearly. _'Holes!'_ the hollow had filled the roof of the caver around them with holes, then taken out the supports, and because of the vacume, he couldn't run away fast enough to get out of the crash zone. Worse, the vacuum only removed the one thing between him and the roof, air resistance.

Tensing his body, Ashido prepared to jump with all his power, even as he recited under hid breath. "Ye Lord! Mask of blood and flesh, all creation, flutter of wings, ye who bears the name of man! On the wall of blue flame, inscribe a twin lotus. In the abyss of conflagration, wait at the far heavens." with that recited, he kicked off the ground, shooting into the sky even as the collapsing cavern was upon him. "Hado #73, Soren Sokatsui!" with a might cry, he shoved both hands into the roof, the powerful Kido drilling him a tunnel to the surface, ironically the escaping air from the collapse only serving to shove him out faster.

Shooting into the air above the surface faster than a bullet, he only had seconds to notice the sound of a second explosion before the surface again burst outwards, the hollow shooting up behind him, hands put together to form a cero as large as his own torso.

Having only seconds to prepare for the oncoming attack, Ashido did the only thing he could do.

"Strike your prey, Tashika Hanta!"

* * *

 **POV: Unnamed Hooded Adjuchas**

After firing my strongest cero at Ashido, still uncertain if it would be enough to finish him off, I backed away from the cloud of smoke that enveloped his position, going to the very edge of the crater. If you can't see your enemy after landing an attack, the first question you should ask isn't "did that kill them", it's "did that affect them".

I formed another staff to be on the safe side, and prepped my tail-blade. After about five seconds, a half dozen branch like spears emerged from the smoke and converged on my position. Rapidly retreating, I watched as the spears all pierced the ground where I had stood just a few seconds ago.

I turned my gaze to the spears origin point, seeing Ashido standing in the air above the desert with only a few minor burns. This is bad. Now that were not surrounded by lesser hollows on all sides, I can make out Ashido's reiatsu, and it's ridiculous. At least three times my own, and _very_ finely controlled. _'Well, at least he's not at the point were I wouldn't be able to hurt him.'_

Seeing as how he was now in shikai, I was glad I had held back from using my mirrors(not that he gave me any openings to use them before) as I still, hopefully, had an ace in the hole. That, and I had him, again: hopefully, in a less advantageous footing. _'Hey, If Ichigo can break even with Kenpachi, then I can beat this guy!'_

That thought reassured me, after testing with lesser hollows I found that one's reiatsu had to eclipsed another by roughly fifty times, at absolute minimum, to cause the kind of recoil seen in Ichigo's first attack on the giant captain, meaning Ichigo beat someone who started the fight over an order of magnitude stronger than him, proven by Kenpachi beating an opponent Ichigo would have still had trouble with after receiving two power-ups.

I focused my gaze on the hilt of Ashido's zanpakuto. The hilt hadn't changed, but the blade had been replaced by a bunch of wood like growths, each one ending in a sharpened point. Of said growths, three immediately surged in my direction, while another three went high over my head and curved around to come at me from behind.

I dodged to the side before they could hit me, however, and took a swipe at the growth with my tail, to test how durable it was. To my surprise, the wooden spear was sheared through with only a bit or resistance. Sure I wouldn't be able to cut through them without a good wind-up, but it was still surprisingly easy.

However, the brief moment of satisfaction was snuffed out immediately as the area I had just cut off immediately grew a new point and continued growing. 'Ok, so I can't take his weapon away, but at least I can cut them if need be.'

I charged at the shinigami, but the wooden tendrils coiled in on themselves like a snake and formed a wall between me and him, only to uncoil like a snake shooting forward, forcing me to dodge the lightning quick attack, which, even then, still nearly clipped me. _'At least it looks like he can't use shunpo with that thing weighing him down. Probably why he only used it when dodging wasn't an option.'_

Charging a cero in one hand and converted the power from my tail blade into another cero, I fired the one from my hand at Ashido, causing him to draw back his branches again to defend himself. The second that the branches were back in a defensive position, I raised my tail as high into the air as I could, jumped straight up, and fired at Ashido's position.

No matter how awkward this tail can be at times, you can't argue with that reach.

The blow sent Ashido flying with minor burns across his cloths, although his hollow mask seemed to have prevented any real damage from carrying through. _'Darn it.'_

Luckily, the blow had sent him flying from his zanpakuto. Unfortunately, he could still use shunpo, and apparently, hakuda, as I learned when he flash-stepped close up and kicked me in the face, causing me to crash into the ground, creating a crater where I was buried in the sand.

As quickly as I pulled myself out of the sand, Ashido had apparently had had the time to get back to his weapons, and now all branches were descending down on me like meteors.

I quickly detonated my staff(and my hand), causing me to shoot of to the side, the sudden burst knocking me of balance, causing me to bounce and roll through the sand, and into the still filling sand-pit where I had collapsed the forest. I quickly shot back out, only to find that Ashido had charged another blue-flame-crashdown, making me use a mirror on reflex.

Dispelling the mirror as quick as possible, hoping he wouldn't notice the ability I had been holding in-reserve, I realized I had to finish this, _now_.

I charged at the shinigami, now holding a sword in my left hand and pumping spiritual power to the right to accelerate the regeneration, which was complete before I reach the half way point between us. He drew three spear/vine/branches back to him in a defensive position, and launched the other three at me.

Forming a sword in my other, now healed hand, I ducked under the first of the spears launched at me, and cut them off as I ran passed them. My body now a purple glowing blur, I rushed at the lost reaper, ducking around his spears and cutting them in half as I went, rapidly mincing the snake-like spear-shafts, even as I charged my (hopefully) secret weapon.

Seeing that he wasn't going to get, me, I saw that the spears seemed to . . . rot off, until only the last ten feet remained. I was now fifty strides away. The ten feet of branches, in a lightning qucik motion, rotated around one another, forming a drill like shape. Forty paces. The drill took on a brilliant green glow. Thirty paces. The drill broke back apart, and with a cry of, _**"Muttsu no ten no shōdō!"**_ launched at me with far greater speed then before. Twenty paces.

 _'Now!'_ my instinct's screamed at me, and I unleashed my trump card. _**"Kagami hogo-sha!"**_ with that cry, my own trump card appeared. Ten mirrors, each a hundred feet tall and a hundred feet wide, appeared between me and Ashido.

This was my trick. As experience showed, it was easy for the mirrors to be broken from the reflective half, but not the dark half. I would be able to smash through all ten easily from this side. The other side however, would take me twenty consecutive fully charged ceros to pierce, I was confident that Ashido wouldn't be able to reach me, cancelling his attacks momentum, and barely affecting mine.

Altering my course slightly, so as to avoid Ashido's attack, I slammed into the first mirror, feeling it break even as three others broke under Ashido's attack. Then it happened.

" _ **Shikei shikkō hito no mori!"**_

* * *

 **POV: Unnamed Hooded Adjuchas**

 _'What?'_ I thought, as I stared down at the ground some thirty feet beneath me. Had I blacked out? If so it was only for a secon- _'oh lord the pain!'_

Pain unlike anything I had ever experienced before shot through my body, and I unleashed a bone chilling cry of agony. After a few seconds, I regained enough sense to look up. In front of me was one of the ten mirrors I had formed, which, from what I could sense, only two remained. Three destroyed by Ashido's attack before being stopped on the fourth, five destroyed by me before I was . . .

 _'I've been impaled.'_ It was a surprisingly conscious thought for all the pain I was in, and thinking it only seemed to make said pain worse.

I had, indeed, been impaled. Through multiple points on my body, from what I could see in the mirror. Hundreds, no, thousands of spears, with shafts only as thick as a normal persons fingers, had risen from the ground in a perfectly vertical wall all around me, and underneath me. Some had hit me and broken on my skin. Others had struck, pierced through, broken inside me, then had the broken part keep growing into me. And some, some had gone all the way through. I had bee hit in at least three dozen places(though I was in to much pain to figure that number out at the moment)

The mirrors dispelled as I resisted the urge to thrash in pain, instinct telling me that that would make it worse. I looked down at Ashido, only ten paces between us, the forest of spears visible all around us. As tears dripped from my blurry eyes, I managed to register a single, minuted detail, and realization cleared my mind enough to speak through the pain. "You . . . were never limited . . . to six spears . . . were you?"

The detail I had notice? A single line of wood only half an inch thick, descending from the pommel of his sword, rather than the blade, to the ground beneath him. The shinigami replied with a simple nod, and allowed all the wooded spears to disintegrate, until only one remained, which was a single, two foot long stake shooting comically out of the sword where the blade should be.

I fell to the ground, striking with a disgustingly wet splat, and a horrid whine of pain, my whole body convulsing as it tried to throw up blood through a throat that simply didn't work that way, retching, wheezing gasps the only sound I could make.

I placed both hands on the ground, trying desperately to pull myself up to my knees. I heard the sound of sand crunching, and barely found the strength to look up. Ashido stood above me, mask removed, sword held in a backhand grip above my face. The look in his eyes . . . pity?

He spoke, a calmness in his voice. "You . . . you fought well. What is you name?"

Through my mind clouded by pain, I managed to register the question. After a few seconds of trying to inhale, making a horrid wet-flesh-vibrating sound, I managed to gather enough air to speak. "I . . . I d . . . don't . . . remember." I said, fresh tears of something other than physical pain flowing down my mask.

Ashido looked slight sad. "My name, is Kano, Ashido. Goodbye, hollow." He raised his sword higher, and then thrust downwards towards my face . . .

* * *

 **POV: Ashido Kano**

I starred at the pitiful creature, impaled in over thirty place by my executioners forest. The creature, wheezing in a way that was painful to hear, shakily raised its gaze to meet my eyes, then drifted to my sword, where it saw the single vine from which I grew the forest that spelled it's doom.

It spoke. "You . . . were never limited . . . to six spears . . . were you?"

Seeing no reason to deny it, as it was the truth, I shook my head, then released my forest, allowing my zanpakuto to shorten into a stake, and switched my grip into reverse, to better stab downwards.

The hollow fell six times my own height to the ground, where it hit the ground with a splat and a wheeze so pitiful that it made me flick in self disgust, the words of one of my late companions echoing through my mind condemningly. _"Ashido! Shinigami are meant to purify hollows! Not torture them!"_

I walked towards the beast, even as it wheezed horribly, and struggled to get up. As I watched it, another memory flashed through my mind. This one of a wisdom imparted by my squad leader the first time I had mad the mistake of killing a hollow from the front, and saw the face under the mask. _"Remember, Kano! Unless the man under the mask is dragged to hell, what you just did was a mercy killing! And if they do go to hell, well then, then they clearly deserved it!"_

Resolve strengthened by memory's of my late companions, I strided forward with propose, stopped directly in front of the hollow, raised Tashika Hanta and began to strike downward . . . only to stop as the hollow looked up to meet my eyes. Over come with a desire to know the name of my opponent, I removed my mask, strapping it to my right side, and spoke. "You . . . you fought well. What is you name, hollow?"

The hollow made several horrible sounds, sounds that made me regret asking, wishing I had just put the pitiful being out of it's misery, but the selfish desire to ask overcame the desire to end this. Finally, blood dripping from the grate in its mask, the hollow replied.

"I . . . I d . . . don't . . . remember." He responded, the answer somewhat disappointing me, but pressing on, I decided that I should at least give him my own name in compensation for the excess pain I had caused the hollow.

"My name, is Kano, Ashido. Goodbye, hollow." I raised my stake back up, and thrust downwards, only for the hollow, in a moment of surprising strength, to whip it's tale at me with enough force to make me back off.

Backing away from the hollow, I question aloud, "Why do you still fight?" even as the hollow found the strength to climb shakily back to it's feet. "You said it yourself. You have no reason to exist. You've lost the battle, and are now in such great pain I can barely stand the sight of you. Let this end. Rest."

The hollow flinched at my claim of it's life's pointlessness, but looked me in the eye even as it's hunched form towered over me. It seemed to consider for several moment's, before it answered.

"Fear. Fear drives me. I am afraid . . . afraid I'll loose, what few memories, I have left, if I go to the soul society." Even as it said this it's bandages wrapped tightly around it's heavily bleeding wounds, and it's constant inhalation grew slightly less disgusting.

"I, am sorry, Ash-i-do. I want to try to be a little selfish, and hold on to myself. If you were, a quincy, I would let you kill me, but the thought of going forward, and leaving myself behind, is far more terrifying than even the thought of my own souls destruction. So let me . . . " the hollow reached up and placed it's talon-ed hand on its face. "Let me be, _SELFISH!"_ with that cry, the hollow _dug_ its claws into it's own mask, spreading crack throughout it, and inhaled more deeply than ever before.

The sudden vacuum was so great that nearby sand dunes were pulled towards it, surrounding the hollow in a tornado of sand, even as I dug Tashika Hanta's branched dozens of feet into the earth to hold my footing, the roots digging until they reached the bed-rock.

Finally secure, I covered my face with the hollow mask, the thick eye holes allowing me to see through the sand.

The hollow stood tall, back arched, mask horribly cracker from where it dug it's claw in, sand slipping thorough the grate at an awe inspiring rate, the entire creature's body glowing an, admittedly beautiful, shade of deep purple. Then, with the sound of pottery shattering, the hollow tore off it's own mask in a single smooth motion, allowing me to glimpse it's face for a brief instant, before the Adjuchas was surrounded in a pillar of the same purple light, all but blinding me and forcing me to cover my eyes.

When the light finally fade, I looked back at the hollow and found myself looking at, not the hollow, but at a far more human figure.

They were about my height, with golden brown hair, that fell down to their waist, and they were all but nude, the remains of a purple robe hanging about them. Their eyes were closed, and one of them was partially concealed behind the remains of a bone white mask. In his right hand, was clutched and odcahi sword with a purple wrapped hilt.

After standing as still as a statue for a moment, the man inhaled, and then after moment, slowly exhaled, somehow making the the basic action sound covey far more euphoria than such a sound had any right to carry.

Opening his eyes, he looked at me, and smiled slightly. Reaching his left hand down, he grabbed the purple robe, which suddenly unravelled into hundred, no, _thousands_ of bandages, leaving him completely exposed for a moment, before wrapping around his entire body like mummy wrappings, leaving only his feet, hands, and head exposed.

His eyes matched mine. Their was a certain . . . relief, and energy, to them. "Kano, Ashido." he said it a clear voice, reaching up and gathering his hair up in one hand, before cutting it off with his Odachi, leaving it down to only just the middle of his should-blades, and letting the remaining the remaining three fifths of his mane blow away in the still billowing wind. He smirked. "Where were we?"

* * *

 **AN: 4:05 AM, Dec 25th, 2018. Over. Seven. Thousand. Words. Not counting the authors note's! This has to be the longest chapter I've ever done! Probably the longest single thing I've ever written! Made all the more impressive because I was only at two thousand when I started today.**

 **Now, If you really want to know why I was taking so long to get this done, I was catching up on my Frostval seasonal quest's of Dragonfable and AdventureQuest Worlds, I was years behind on those.**

 **Now normally I tell you how I came to the conclusions I did concerning Kenpachi's reiatsu relative to Ichigo, but it's 4:10 right now and I don't want to end up sleeping till 2 Pm . . . again . . . on to the reviews! Luckily theirs only two worth noting.**

 **sloth slayer: Sorry, your review seemed a bit rushed and hard to make out. How could looking into mirrors while alive be used to "a few more additions either to your mc or potential oc allies"? Afterwards it's just you take on my SI's appearance, and how you think the bleach timeline works, so I won't comment on that . . . more than I have . . . still commenting, darn-it . . .**

 **king gilgamesh: No no no, you forgot to say "Mongrel". You've got the condescending insults and belittlement part down, but you need to call me "Mongrel to really got the "Gilgamesh" role down! Otherwise you just come across as a second rate fate fan! Also, I doubt the actual gilgamesh would have grammar that bad, so you need to work on that. Maybe get that Grammarly I keep hearing about?**

 **Ok, talk to you guys later, it is 4:18 now I need to go to bed before someone breaks the door down and makes me.**

 **Update: 4:27 Am February 19th. Yikes I need to work on this more. Anyway, for those who bothered to check this far, the next chapter should be out by friday, but I couldn't stand all the mistakes in this one, so I edited and re-uploaded it. Sorry if I got your hopes up.**


	11. Anticlimax

**AN: 11:49 PM, Dec 25th, 2018. Well, time to start the next chapter. Was half asleep when I finished last night, so I'll probably end up revising my last chapter after I upload this one . . .**

* * *

 **POV: Unnamed Arrancar**

My head was _CLEAR_. So, SO clear! Clearer than it had been is sooooooo, long. For the first time in as long as I could remember, I, could, _think_.

Think without all those roguish instincts roughly ragging rambunctious riots through the alcoves of my consciousness, reeking rotting retching rebellions of throughout halls of my conciousness. I could think clearly. I could even think Poetically! It was _wondrous!_

My thought were free in a way that they hadn't been since . . . since . . . well, since I became a hollow. It was like when you climb out of the water and can move properly again. I was walking, not floundering.

I inhaled deeply, head back, eyes closed, revelling in the sensation of my lungs(actual lungs! Not a damned bottomless pit!) filling with air. With a slight shudder, I exhaled for the first time in what had to be years, the sensation sending a pleasant jolt down my spine.

I inhaled deeply again, simply enjoying the sensation of the action, even as I focused on Ashido's reiatsu, just to be sure he wasn't doing anything. Considering how he's lost some of his control over said reiatsu, he's most likely surprised, but he's a veteran warrior, so I doubt that will last for much longer.

I opened my eyes, after a moment, and saw Ashido, standing there dumbstruck. I smirked, before I felt something brush against my lower back, and realize two things. 1. I am naked, and 2. my hair is now way, way, _way_ to long.

With a mental twitch, I spread my reiatsu through the torn remains of my robe, which were scattered on the ground around me. The robes unravelled into their base bandages, and quickly re-wrapped themselves around me, leaving me looking a little like a bare footed mummy, with a quadruple wrapping do to the shear number of bandages.

That done, I looked up and stared Ashido in the eye. "Ashido, Kano." I said his name. (In my voice. _My_ voice. Not my hollow forms voice, _my_ voice!)

I reached around behind me, and gathered up my hair in one hand. With a quick slice from the Odachi in my right hand(how long have I been holding that?) I cut my hair to a better length. Shoulder length hair is _much_ more manageable.

I returned my attention to the shinigami "Where were we?" I smirked, watching as he quickly shook his head and lengthened his zanpakuto into a more snake like shape, coiled and ready to extend at any moment. I saw dozens of little buds branch off from the sides, most likely to prepare for future attacks. Apparently, he's not going to keep the pretense of only having six spears anymore.

Now that I had somewhat gotten over the shear euphoria that was the return of my standard breathing apparatus, and the return of my brain functions to their standard speed in all things not related to combat, I realized I would need to readjust to my body. My sense of balance had been thrown somewhat off, do to the change in height and lack of a tail. That was bad for being in the middle of a fight, as I would have to re-learn this as I went along.

I placed both feet in a stable position, and placed the blade of my odachi over my shoulder. I notced the guard's was heavily decorated, but put that out of my mind for the time being. I could admire the soul-swords decoration later. Instead, I focused on the weight, and the length. Overall, I'd say this sword was only a few inches shorter than I am tall, the blade having a slightly less defined cure than average, from my memories of the swords I had researched in the past.

I, with a two handed grip, took an experimental swing of the sword, causing a notable gust of air, and making Ashido tense in preporation for an attack, but otherwise remain in his defensive stance.

The sword was comfortable, unsurprisingly considering it was forged from my own power and soul.

I had some knowledge of how to used Odachi swords, though I had little actual practice. The sword was only slightly longer than one of my energy blades, but those weren't curved, so my stabs and thrusts may be awkward.

I doubt that the addition of a curve will make too big a difference, but stacked with my new(old?) body and my having to face another humanoid opponent the same size as me for the first time since I was still a menos(and none of them had the strength to hold their own against me power wise) I was going to have to rely on instinct for more than I'm comfortable with.

I sighed. "You know, I actually prefer not to make the first move. The last time . . . well, you were attacking my talking-buddy. We could honestly just end this now and go our separate ways if you want. But, since I somehow doubt that you _don't_ want to keep fighting . . . " I slid my feet into a basic stance, placed both hands on the handle of my sword, and lay the weapon across one shoulder in a rest position that could be easy changed into an attack. " . . . Come at me."

Ashido lunged.

* * *

 **POV: Ashido Kano**

". . . Come at me." those words snapped me out of my shock, and with a surge of energy, I shot forward in a shunpo. I started my attack with a stab a his chest.

He, in a single smooth motion, moved his sword from it's rest spot on his shoulder, angled his body so that my lunge would pass over his shoulder, and spun in place while taking a slash at my legs, forcing me to jump. I flipped vertically, and stabbed at him with a multi-pronged strike even as I flew past him upside down, causing him to collapse to the ground to avoid my strike.

Blurring into a roll across the ground with a surge of power, which felt uncomfortably similar to shunpo, the hollow shoot to his feet behind me, and, regaining his footing, kicked me in the ribs ankle first, the bone on bone collision giving me the impression I had some cracked ribs.

The first skirmish ending in my being sent flying, I bounced across the dunes a few times before coming to my feet and skidding to a stop. I took on a one handed guard position, waiting for him to attack. My branches spread out around me in a net like pattern as preparation for future attacks.

The . . . hollow?( _'Is he even still a hollow at this point?'_ ) began to pace, back and forth, like a caged animal. Never crossing some invisible line, eyes never leaving me. He even blinked his eyes individually so as to always keep one eye on me. We remained like that for several minutes, before the hollow spoke.

"Are you forgetting? I don't really want to fight you, not consciously. If you want to keep fighting, then you have to be the aggressor." the hollow stopped pacing and pointed his sword at me. "Otherwise, just leave. I want to make sure Iniba's ok."

I remained tense, not believing the hollow for an instant. The hollow just stood and stared, his stance returning to the same rest position that we had started with. Eyes half lidded, giving me the impression he was either sad, or tired.

I took the time to observe him more carefully now. The . . . being . . . was breathing rather deeply, taking in every breath like it was something precious, though it didn't seem to have the best lung capacity.

His reiatsu also seemed to have changed after it did . . . whatever it was that made it(him?) take on this more human appearance. It wasn't necessarily that it was stronger, more that it had grown heavier, and more dense, like the power had been compressed to fit in his new body.

Also, before, his reiatsu had had a strange feel to it, that I had found nerve racking, like it was always trying to draw things closer to him. In his experience, you could identify a lot about a soul's powers based on their reiatsu. Souls with fire power had a reiatsu that never stopped moving and felt hot, water and ice users feeling calm and flowing, ect. When he had first felt this hollows power, he had assumed a leaching based ability, though it turned out to be those vacuums.

Now? While yes, it still had that magnetic quality, his reiatsu now displayed for more emotion than any other hollow he had previously encountered. And the emotions most prominent were . . . excitement, relief, glee, and . . . annoyance? Why would he be annoyed? Was he actually aggravated that I was still fighting him?

I shook the thoughts from my head. No time for such things. I raised my zanpakuto over my head and sent a surge of power through our bond. Branches shoot into the sky, turned towards the ground, and collided with enough force to throw clouds of dust hundreds of feet up.

Tashika Hanta. My one companion in this retched world. Our bond went far beyond that of an normal shinigami-zanpakuto relationship. Everything he felt, I felt, and vice versa. His every branch and tendril was as much a sensory organ for me as my fingers, thus I was confident in their ability to find the hollow in the dense fog even as I moved quickly, yet subtly as possible to avoid detection myself. I needed to find him before he simply inhaled the dust cloud.

However, even if it took me only an instant to survey the are with the hundreds of tendrils that I had produced, I still failed to find the hollow. Had he instinctively fled the bounds of the dust cloud?

With a mental command, Hanta spun up a wordless Hado #58: Tenran. The wordless kido had less than a fourth it's normal power, but was sufficient to blow away the dust cloud I had made.

Sure enough, my quarry was sitting a fair distance away, far enough that I wouldn't be able to cover the distance without him noticing unless I suddenly quadrupled my speed.

He just sat their, uninterested, legs underneath him in such a way that he'd be easily able to spring to his feet, sword over his shoulder, looking annoyingly casual as he glared at me from the distance.

"Was that really necessary? You blocked out the moonlight." He yelled at me. After a moment of nothing happening, he yelled again. "On second thought, keep doing what your doing, I hate the moonlight, it's to pale, nothing like the living woulds . . . not that you'd remember that!" he yelled in a complaining tone.

I didn't respond, just watching the hollow. What did it want? It wasn't attacking and wasn't leaving. It was intentionally leaving itself open, and hadn't launched an attack since it . . . evolved. What was it planing?

* * *

 **POV: Unnamed Arrancar**

I sighed, annoyed. I know that trying to break off from the fight was a long shot, but I'd rather do this than keep trying to fight. The violent instinct's that I was running off of before have been toned down to the point that the joy and excitement I feel at having . . . myself, back is drowning them out. It's like a total stranger trying to get in a fist fight right after you get a wining lottery ticket. Why would you want to fight?

I mean, Ashido's one of my favourite characters! I remember being driven from reading good stories just cause they killed him! Why would I want to fight him? Sure, I attacked him before, but, he was attacking Inaba! I may not have know her that long, but she and Zilly are the closest thing to friends I have in this thrice damned world! I'm not about to give them up!

That's why I didn't just leave. I didn't want him to come after me again. There's no guarantee that I could get him away from those two again, at least not before he could kill one of them. But how do I take him out without killing him, or at least crippling him(which is a death sentence in this . . . world. But I have access to more than one world).

. . . maybe having my thoughts cleared out isn't such a good thing, their all over the place and it's throwing me off.

I get to my feet, eye's still focused on Ashido. I could tell from the way he tensed that he could see the change in my eye's. I spoke. "I'll give you one last chance to leave. If you don't . . . well, I'll try to break every bone in your body then dump you in the world of the living, capiche? You have until the count of five."

"One." he crouched.

"Two." he lunged.

" _Sigh_ , Five." I shurged forward to meet him and took a hard swing at his right shoulder, aiming for where the bone is thickest. A single wooden tendril blocked my strike, only for me to roar at the top of my recently returned lungs, the reiatsu enhanced sound blowing him backwards.

Coiling my hand into a leopards paw, I launched a Bala at the still of balance shinigami, the much faster attack catching him off guard and striking him square in the diaphragm, hunching him over and leaving him open for me to kick him in the face, sending him flying, trailing several dozen thin streams of wood behind him that would have speared me through had I been a moment slower.

He bounced twice off the ground before disintegrating the vines/branches/roots and shooting back to his feet, forming a wooden shield just in time to block my follow-up cero.

Before my cero had even ended, A series of vines wrapped around my legs and drug . . . dragged . . . pulled me off my feet, causing my cero to go blazing off into the starless sky as I was yanked roughly towards the shinigami.

I hit the vines with a half-baked shot of reiatsu and rolled aside as a kido-spell slammed into where I had been only seconds before. I then wrapped a bandage around my sword's handle to free up my hands, and two-handedly blasted the ground with a similar burst of energy, the resulting explosion shooting me up into the sky.

Rotating mid air, I formed small bala's between each finger(only now considering how easily I was using an ability I had had for less then five minutes) and proceeded to carpet bomb Ashido's general are with a constant stream of sphere's of destruction.

Ashido quickly put a wodden shield overhead to block the weak but constant stream of attacks. I, meanwhile formed another cero with my feet, and used it to propel me in a curved arc towards the ground. Slamming into the ground feet first and throwing up a cloud of dust, I looked up and caught Ashido's surprised look. Apparently he was unused to methods to speed one's decent.

Taking advantage of the Shinigami's surprise, my entire body took on a deep purple glow as I shot forwards at speeds far greater than Ashido, or I for that matter, was prepared for.

I body slammed the soul-reaper shoulder-first, actually knocking the blade out of his hands as my momentum carried us both away, my own sword held at an angle to avoid stabbing him. I stumbled for a moment after the collision, but quickly regained my footing and continued to charge forward, Ashido glued to my left shoulder by the velocity, our faces close enough to brush noses.

After several seconds or running, I attempted to stop, the feeling of sand grinding against my still exposed feet an extremely odd sensation after years of having a layer of bone like material between me and the matterial. To further slow my momentum, I blasted a surge of reiatsu through my hands, successfully slowing to a total stop in only a second or so. This, of course, had the intended side affect of letting Ashido rocket forward without me and through several sand dunes.

I stood in my skid-crater for a few seconds panting slight from the sudden burst of energy, before a shadow fell over me. Looking up . . . _'Oh, so he doesn't need to be touching his zanpakuto to use it . . .'_ I saw a _rain_ of spears blocking out the dull moonlight.

After the moment it took my mind to resister this, I again flashed purple and vanished into an instinct driven expression of sonido, barely getting of the way of the attack.

Looking back at the near solid wall of wooden spears behind me, arching off beyond the horizon, the only thing I could wonder was if this qualified Ashido as a tier 7-B character. However before my thoughts could move beyond weather or not that was a relevant question, the branches took on a green glow and began to spark. _'Well_ shit _.'_

I pulled up as many mirrors as possible between me and the branches and . . . _'BOOOOOOOOOOOOOMBBBBBBBBB!'_

AsI was flying through the air, my skin feeling like I had just opened a smelter filled to the brim and set on high with a gaint working the billows to be sure. Blinded by the light put off by the explosion, I revised my earlier thought. _'No, he's definitely 7-_ A _.'_

After flying what had to be at several dozen Kilometers, all while spinning out of control and trying not to cut anything off with my own sword, which was still held in one of my bandages, I managed to rotated upright mid air and blasted myself to the ground with another cero.

After taking a few moment's to regain my senses, I quickly took off for Ashido's last know location, were I had lunched him into the dunes, hoping he was still there. He knows were I live after all, I can't afford to leave him running around Hueco Mundo. I happen to like being able to sleep without having to keep one eye open! . . . I wish I new kido, I bet the shinigami have a way of shielding their basses . . .

Upon nearing the location of the blast, I marvelled at the size of the dust cloud for a moment, which I'm sure covered an area larger than a small country, then shook it off.

I entered the clound and quickly began looking around for any sign of the shinigami. After a moment or two of looking, I realized it was a lost cause trying to find someone with centuries of experience over me in a state sized dust cloud of all places. Moving back out of the cloud, I found a good spot and became to surge out my reiatsu in short bursts, hoping he would come to me. If not . . . well, I'll have to move.

After standing on top of a tall sand dune several miles from the edge of the cloud for a few minutes, I more heard than felt something to my right. Spinning in place, I saw a stream of Ashido's vines appear out of the ground and launch themselves at me. _'And of course he's not getting close if he can avoid it.'_

I jumped backwards, another group of vines nearly getting me from behind, and choose to jump strait up to avoid them, which was a lucky choice, as a new forest of spears emerging all around were I had been standing a moment before. I expanded a large mass of my bandages out behind me, using them to form a makeshift para-sail and using short bursts of my own reiatsu to keep myself aloft. Hopefully this will draw him out into the open.

The spears covering the ground reached up in a tentacle like manner for a moment, then began to coil across the ground, their movements going from octopus like to snake like.

I formed a cero in my free hand and fired it to my left. The purple blast curved towards the ground mid air, sacrificing a good deal of speed and power for the change in trajectory, but causing damage to the vines none the less.

In response, the vines shoot up into the air, shooting through were one would assume the cero had come from, had it moved in a straight line instead of a curve. Of course, that means they missed me by about forty feet.

I shoot another curved cero, to the same results. _'If I keep this up, I can force Ashido to come and try to find me with his eyes. And if he can see me, I could probable see him . . . oh I hope he doesn't have some sort of invisibility kido . . . '_

I repeated my curve-shot success five or six more times before I felt a sudden flair of spiritual pressure to my left. I spun around on my bandage-parasails cords in time to see a _wall_ of blue fire surging towards me. Instantly collapsing my glider, I dived towards the ground to get out of the way of the sokatsui . . . only to run head first into another one aimed directly below the first.

Slamming into the ground feeling extra crispy, the first thing I did was blast my reiatsu out in all directions to drive away the vines before they could converge on me. My second thing I did was check my hair, to make sure it was still there. Hey, I just got it back, alright? I don't want to loose it again!

Anyway, after confirming that my hair was at least the same length, I blasted off the ground and began to head for were I had felt the flair of reiatsu before the kido hit me. I arrived there in a fraction of a second, and found what was either a pleasant surprise of a trap.

You see, the shinigami had fired at me from just inside the dust cloud, and his retreat had carved a trail through the mist. Now, such a path would logically close in seconds . . . but I can break the sound barrier by doing a light jog, so following the trail was actually childishly easy. Especially since Kano was, as of now, slightly taller than me, and thus left a larger tunnel than I would.

I followed the shingamis path through the cloud, hoping that that I didn't run head first into the pointy end of his spears . . . why did I think it was a good idea to follow the guy who could attack from every direction at once into what was all but zero viz?

Shaking off my nervousness, I continues on into the dust, hoping to catch the reaper before he could prepare a serious offence. I soon spotted a figure ahead of me, and began to charge a cero in my mouth, only to be forced to duck underneath a shakkaho, the cero loosing power before I could unleash it.

I put on an additional burst of speed now that I had sight of my enemy, nearly overtaking him, but he shot a bolt of lightning at me, making me dodge again. I then noticed a detail I had missed earlier. _'He doesn't have his zanpakuto on him?'_

That certainly explained why he was retreating. He hadn't recovered his main offensive option after causing that explosion. I redoubled my speed again, trying to tackle the shinigami. In micro seconds I was close enough to brush my fingers against the back of his robe. As I reached out to grab him, Kano suddenly turned left, forcing me to come skidding to a stop to turn.

Or I _would_ have come skidding to a stop, if it wasn't for the fact that I had just found the edge of the crater caused by the earlier explosion. I rocketed over the edge and found myself running on thin air for a minute, before gravity asserted itself and I fell into the pit.

I bounced off the opposite side of the massive cratter and tumbled into the centre, again having to avoid my own sword for fear of hurting myself, before regaining my balance. Just as I managed to get my feet underneath me, I felt the earth vibrate. Looking up, I saw _thousands_ of vines emerge from the edges of crater, all converging on me at once. _'Ok, how much flipping reiatsu does this guy have?!'_

I shoot up towards the wall of spears, now grabbing my sword in both hands, the blade held over my right shoulder in preparation for the swing. I channel as much reiatsu as possible through and over the blade, forming an energy blade over my sword that wouldn't look out of place in a mecha anime.

I swung the sword with as much force as possible, the now over a hundred foot blade passing through the hordes of spears with barely any resistance. I jumped, kicking off the stumps before they could regenerate, using them as a spring-board in order to land on the edge of the blast crater. Taking a moment to check the edge, I noticed that it looked liked it had been raked flat. _'And that's why I didn't notice until the last minute. He_ planned _this.'_

I began to look around desperately for the shinigami. By this point I was feeling incredibly stressed. Ashido was officially the most dangerous thing I had ever fought, and unless I go challenge Barragan or try invading the Seireitei, that's not going to change for a while. I can't just have him running around. I need to do _something_ to make him leave me alone.

I spun around violently in the dust cloud trying to find the shinigami, giant glowing enegy sword still over my shoulder in what would be a comical display if I wasn't so desperate. A spear emerged from the ground behind me, but I dodge it easily. _'Not like that helps me know where he is.'_

Chances are, he's not even putting that much effort into hiding his reiatsu anymore, but with how much of his power is already saturating the air at this point its like trying to find the garbage truck in the dump. Finally, I swung my sword sideways two handedly, the resulting gust of wing blowing away considerable amounts of the dust, but not enough to reveal the location of the shinigami.

I repeated the process several times, each time meet with failure. A few times I thought I felt him moving, but that could be my mind playing tricks on me.

I hated the waiting game. It's fine to just wait when you know what your waiting for, but now that I had lost track of him, all it was was stressful. Finally, when I was on the breaking point, I felt a flicker or reiatsu. But, it wasn't Ashido's reiatsu. _'Tsuki?'_

Before I could fully register the rabbits presence, I felt her reiatsu flair up, and a screem echoed through the air, the sound wave strong enough to send ripples through the ground and make my ears hurt. _Then_ I felt Ashido's reiatsu flare up. Apparently, Tsuki chan just screemed right next to him.

I immediately charged, swinging my sword once I got close enough, causing a massive gust of wind that blew away the dust around the two.

Inaba looked fine, fur a little ruffled and a bit off balance, but that was because of the wind I had caused. Ashido, meanwhile looked like he had just had his eardrums burst. His favoraite mask was now laying on the ground in front of him, he was on one knee, head pressed into his right shoulder as his left hand covered the other ear, which appeared to be bleeding. In his right hand, he held his, apparently recovered, sword, the wooden shaft still shooting off into the sand at his feet.

He looked up suddenly when he realized that the wind I had caused wasn't another scream from Tsuki(hard to tell things like that when, again, you have burst eardrums). Staggering to his feet, Ashido pulled his weapon out of the ground, trying to get a wall up between us.

Well, more between him and my giant sword, whick was now swinging towards him flat side first(making sure Inaba was out of the way). Unfortunately for him, his speed was not up to their usual standards(is he finally getting tired?), and I hit him like a ping-pong ball. Sending him flying, I called a quick thanks to Inaba and charged after him.

The shinigami quickly regained his footing and, rather than trying to get away, tried to close the distance between us with a shunpo. His attempt was successful, as he exited the flash-step In grappling range, weapon now shaped as a club and held overhead for a powerful downward swing. In response I dispelled the energy blade and held my sword overhead, one hand in the middle of the blade to better adsorb the shock.

However, instead of striking downwards, he let go of his zanpkuto, vanished into another shunpo, reappearing beside me, grabbed my wrist, and twisted my arm in such a way that I lost grip on my own weapon. The second that I had released the blade, he kicked me in the ribs sending me skidding backwards.

The soul-reaper immediately recovered his own weapon, throwing mine over his shoulder and charging my still off balance self. He forked his spears into multple prongs and tried to drive me back, but was given the harsh reminder that Inaba was still here when she body slammed him from behind.

It took him a moment to get the rabbit off of him(probably had something to do with her being the size of a small horse), and by the time he did, I had closed the distance to punch him full in the chin with a Bala enhance punch, his body rocketing into the air.

The shinigami spun mid air to face me, even as I crouched to jump after him. He reared his arm back, his weapon now taking on the appearance of a spear. _'Is he going to throw it?'_

The following event's blur together, but from what I could tell afterwards it happened like this. Ashido said "Ban" and my hear rate tripled at the meaning behind single syllable. In response flared up all my remaining energy and jumped with enough force to leave a crater the size of a house, slamming head first into Asido's stomach with enough force to make his spit up a half gallon of blood, and give me the first concussion I had suffered in either lifetime, before we were both sent flying by another physical wall of sound from Tsuki, Leaving Ashido unconscious on the ground next to me while I tried to figure out which of the three moons circling above me was the real one.

Soon enough Tsuki was hovering over me, her voice conveying the concern that her features were incapable of. "Are you alright?"

I groaned for a moment before responding. "My head, is pounding like I have a _jackhammer_ stuffed in one ear. NO."

The rabbit seemed to consider for a moment, before asking, "Is their anything I can do to help?"

"DON'T speak."

"Ok."

* * *

 **AN: 2:52 AM Sat Fab 23rd 2019. Ok. So. Two months. I'd like to say have an excuse, but to be honest, I don't. I fixed up the last chapter on Tuesday, and said that I'd have the next update out on Friday. Guess I was late for that too . . . and this isn't even that great a chapter. At least, I don't think it is. I didn't name it "anticlimax for nothing." to be honest I didn't know how to end the fight, so I was left with that. Anyway, I guess it's time I answer the relevant(no offence to those of you who just left quick compliments) reviews.**

 **Wyserd: Thanks for the compliments. I'd never heard of Mobb Deep before you mentioned it, and I guess I see what you were talking about after listening to the song. Though, what was that PITIFUL. Comment about?**

 **Supernatural9000: I'm pretty sure the level cap is somewhere between 85 and 90 now. Of cours, I'm just level 45.**

 **006Sam: Just him "being a *****," though he will still have some moral confliction over this in latter arcs.**

 **I Lost My Name: Yes, this is happening before cannon begins.**

 **And to gamerjames27 and Roberto Pelotudo, thanks for noticing!**

 **Well, goodbye until next time. The cat, who has figured out how my schedule goes, is here for her 3am pets.**

 **PS. I just realized that this is now officially my longest story. Huh.**


	12. Just Talking

**AN: 12:21 AM, Feb 26th, 2019. I will give no excuses for it taking a few days to get started.**

* * *

 **POV: Unnamed Arrancar**

I sat on my knees, Inaba right beside me, panting heavily. Looking at the lagomorph, I absently I noted that the rabbit was actually larger than me at this point.

We didn't say anything, just recovering from the exertion of the fight . . . or in Tsuki's case, following behind our fight, because I don't even know how far from home we are at this point. Either way, I doubt that it's less than a hundred miles . . .

I groaned as I got up, walking over to the unconscious shinigami and beginning to check him over. I carefully rolled him unto his back. Their was blood on his chin, and his breathing was slightly laboured. I carefully dragged him over to a small rise in the sand and probed him up.

That done, I retrieved his sword, now reverted to a basic katana, from where it had fallen and placed it next to him. Finally, I began to look around for his favourite hollow mask. After a few minutes of wandering around, I found the mask sitting in the sand. Lucky he lost it when he did, It probably would have shattered if Tsuki's scream had hit it full force.

Bringing the mask back to the man, I gently placed the mask on his chest, and rested his hands on it. I slipped his sword back into the loop in his belt, and used a small, torn off chunk of bandage to wipe what blood I could off his chin.

Walked back over to Inaba, who had had her ears trained on the man the whole time and sat back down next to her. "Thank you, Tsuki-Chan. For helping me, I mean. I don't think I could have managed to beat him without your help."

For a second, she did nothing except twitch one ear. Then, after a few moment's she replied. "Your voice. It sounds different. And your actually breathing."

I smiled at that, the sudden rush of glee at the simple motion clearing away all remaining stress from the fight. "Yeah, I tore off my mask to become an arrancar. I guess I changed a lot, didn't I?"

she turned her head to look at me head tilted to the side, her ears positioned in such a way as to give her the impression of being curious despite her lack of eyes(Were did she learn to do that? Did someone teach her to do that?). "Oh, so that's what happened. I thought that you may have evolved, but that makes more sense. It explains why your reiatsu feels more . . . human, than before."

After saying that, we fell back into our comfortable silence for several minutes more, before the rabbit broke the silence again. "What are you going to do with him?" she asked, one ear twitching towards the limp figure of the shinigami.

I thought for a moment, before responding. "I'm going to dump him in the Living world as soon as my strength returns. I would just use my vacuum, but I don't think I can do that anymore. Not without releasing anyway. At least I can still form Mirrors." I chuckle out loud. "not that that helped much earlier. Not much use in a defence against three sixty attack options."

Tsuki took a moment to think on that, before responding. "Why? Let him live, that is. He's strong. He could come after us in the future."

I turned away, wondering for the briefest instant how much body-language Tsuki picked up on with her hearing, and responded. "I know that. I'm not an idiot. Just, not necessarily sane, either. I know that he could continue being a threat, hell, I know he may be able to kill all three of us, single handed if he used Bankai, but . . . It just feels wrong."

Inaba didn't say anything, so I elaborated. "He's not a hollow. He's . . . not part of our curse, I guess. We hollows, were the degraded souls of humans, locked in an eternal hunger, forced to consume other souls to try and fill a void that will never be filled. A big part of me," I inhaled deeply, before continuing. "a big part of me, feels that killing a hollow is a mercy. I can't begrudge him his actions. And no, that doesn't mean I want to die . . . simply that I don't value this existence of mine enough to be willing to kill to defend it . . . what about you?"

Her ears turned away from me, pointing off into the distance, for a few moments, and she seemed to be thinking. Finally, she turned her head down, another piece of body language I had to wonder how she learned, and answered. "I don't know. I've never really thought about it, just . . . existed. I . . . never even considered it. All I new was that I was empty and wanted to be filled."

"But no amount of souls will fill that pit. The only salvation that a hollow can find is in death. The thing that keeps me going is that I may, somehow, be able to do _something_ to make things better, and my own fear of loosing my sense of self. Or at least, thats what I think it is. It's foolish to think you truly know yourself until after your perception has been tested, and I've proven time and time again that I become a vicious monster when I feel my existence is a risk." I shake my head. "I've recovered enough to go."

I stand up and walk over to the limp figure of Ashido, and carefully lift him, making sure that all his masks and his sword stay in place. "You can come with me, if you want." I say over my shoulder to the rabbit, who looks up(or imitates the motion)

"No, I need to go tell Zilly that were fine. He may not say it, but he worries." I nod, before again realizing that even if she can here the motion, it's still rude to not speak out loud (I really need to adjust to her blindness . . . ) "Ok, I see you soon."

I walk into a newly formed garganta, wondering if saying "see you" to a blind person counts as rubbing it in, and wondering if I should apologize when I get back.

* * *

 **POV: Unnamed Arrancar**

Getting out of the garganta, I find myself standing in the middle of the ocean. I close my eyes and focus, trying to locate any nearby souls. It's both harder and easier to sense reiatsu in the WOTL, less strong souls, but less energy in the air to "block the signal". Because of this, I could feel the power of many souls, but I couldn't tell which, if any, of them were human. So, I simply choose a direction and took off.

After a few minutes of "sonido, make sure Ashido's fine and has all his things, repeat" I reach the shore. I continue on, looking for a road, not bothering to look at the plant life(lets face it, I'd probably forget about anything else if I did look at the plants).

It wasn't long until I found what I found what I was looking for( moving at mach speed does that), and soon I was following the road to a small town. Stopping in the town, I flare my reiatsu for a minute, and after feeling not response, continue on down the road. I need a town/city with a shinigami.

So was the pattern for the next six or so towns, no major reiatsu signatures. Finally, I found myself on the outskirts of a small city, the great pillars of iron and concrete rising out of the ground, and the constant criss-crossing of traffic marking the location as one in my mind.

I quickly sonido to the top of the tallest nearby skyscraper, and begin to flare out my reiatsu, being sure to keep it from being strong enough to have a negative effect on the normal humans wandering the streets below. Soon enough, I feel a small reiatsu begin to flit around me, moving at speed far faster than any human could hope to. From the feel, I believe I've found a shinigami, though I decide to be prepared for the chance that I'm wrong.

Carefully setting the unconscious form of Ashido on the ground, I step back and pull my sword from my shoulder, where It had been held in a manner that was definitely ripped of of Ichigo's zangetsu. I crouch down and wait with my sword rested across my knees, focusing on the location of the reiatsu signature buzzing around bellow me.

They've moving around me carefully, most likely to weary to approach. Most likely they had already called backup and were just monitoring my movements to be sure I don't try anything funny. Or, well, wait _until_ I try something funny, from their point of view, I doubt theirs a doubt in their minds. I settled down to wait for them.

I inhaled deeply, enjoying the different taste of the world of the living, noting the greater level of moisture in it compared to Hueco Mundo. It's honestly quite shocking how sensitive my sense of taste has become after several . . . years? Decades? without using it.

I exhaled, still getting used to the feel of air coming back out of me. I was somewhat disappointed to not be able to absorb reiatsu at the same rate, but I figured that the trade was good enough for getting my old self back. Besides, I'f I wanted that power back, all I needed to do was release my sword.

Opening my eyes, I turned my gaze to my sword. I ran my finger across the blade, admiring to sharpness. I ran my palm over the wrappings on the grip, noting how they were both more comfortable than my bandages, yet seemed to have more friction to them, making it harder to use the grip. The blade had a notable Hamon running its length, which looked absolutely beautiful in the sunlight. The pommel and . . . tsuba, that's what it was called, had notable vine and flowed decorations, with six deep purple stones embedded in a ring around the blade, with vines connecting them. I ran my finger across the blade again appreciating the smooth surface. _'I don't think blood would even stick to this . . . they're here.'_

I looked up at the senkaimon appearing above me, feeling the reiatsu of the black clad figure that exited the doorway to another dimension. I could feel the reishi flowing from the should society through the open gate, making sure to get a feel for the energy, hoping that the feel would allow me to more easily enter the soul society in the feature(which I have admittedly never even tried.)

The shinigami was admitedly rather plain looking, like you took the average black haired muscly guy of the street, put him in a black shihakusho and gave him a katana. His reiatsu was more powerful then almost any hollow I had met, but was still notably lacking when compared to the pillar of strength that Ashido was(when conscious). Of course, theirs always the chance that he's a seated officer and thus required to wear a power limited, ar which poin . . . well, He's still be weaker than Ashido, but he's at least be able to harm me . . . I think, I have a Hierro now.

I (metiphoricaly)shook those thought from my head and focused on what the reaper was doing. To be specific, just standing there, staring at me. Well, in front of me, actually. He was looking at Ashido, his gaze shifting to me for a moment then back to the unconscious shinigami at my feet, then back to me, then Ashido. This pattern was only broken when the shinigami who had been buzzing around the building I was on flash-stepped up to the new one and seemed to ask him a question, from the reaction.

I remained crouched on my knees, waitin for the two to do something as they seemed to argure back and forth nervously. I get the feeling that neither of them was ready for a somewhat human-feeling hollow to show up in the middle of a city carrying a knocked-out shinigami whose power is clear even when exhausted and unconscious. I yawned, causing both of them to jolt in place. Their arguing increased in response.

Finally, after enough time passed that I could count to 600(of course I count so fast that I could probably do that an half a second if I really tried), they finally stopped arguing and one pulled out what appeared to be a primitive cellphone and made a call. After several moments of talking, they hung up and began to approach me nervously, walking on air.

The more powerful of the two, the new arrival landed on the roof top first, and walked up to Ashido carefully, never letting himself look away from me. I just stared at him, which seemed to make him more nervous.

The weaker of the duo came from behind and began to check over the unconscious shinigami, the new arrival standing between me and them, weapon drawn and held in a defensive stance. I looked him in the eye, before yawning a jaw breaking yawn, covering my mouth and closing my eyes. I felt the Shinigami jolt, but made no indication.

Involuntary inhalation complete, I returned my attention the the shinigami in front of me. "You know, I've had enough of these, "silent standoffs" today." I say, causing both of them to jolt. The lead reaper crouched down, both hands of his sword, and I felt him raise his reiatsu.

"What are you?" he asked, no sigh of nervousness in his voice. Kind of impressive, really, considering I can feel his fear in his spiritual pressure.

I tilted my head to the side. "Me? I'm . . . what you call an arrancar. Which, is to say, I am a hollow who ripped their own mask in order to achieve a more . . . shinigami like state." I flicked my sword in their direction for emphasis, making the one who had been examining Ashido jump back.

The lead shinigami didn't move, still showing no signs of his nervousness on his face. "Why are you here?"

I yawned again, and rested my head on one arm. "I'm getting that guy," I gesturing to the unconscious shinigami, "out of my home. He's apparently been stuck in Hueco Mundo for over a hundred years, names Ashido If I remember correctly." I yawned again. "And just let me say, he is _much_ stronger than you, so If I wanted you dead . . . well, you would be." I finished the sentence right in his ear from behind, causing him to spin around trying to slash me, only for me to return to my original sitting position before he could even complete the motion. _'Ok, I_ love _sonido.'_

The duo took a few steps back, but didn't retreat. I, meanwhile, stood back up and cracked my back. "Well, since I'm technically done here, I guess theirs no point waiting for you to take him back to sould society of something." I opened another Garganta and began to walk into it, before calling over my shoulder. "Oh yeah, when he wakes up, tell him I ow him one. I wouldn't have had the guts to do this," I ran my had from the edge of the mask fragment, over my eye, and down to my chin, "If he hadn't pushed me so hard." on that note, the garganta closes.

* * *

 **POV: Unnamed Arrancar**

Stepping through to into Hueco Mundo, I found myself once again subjected to the dead rays of the hollow worlds moon. I stared up at it for a moment, belittling the heavenly body in my mind, before I turned away and setting out for home.

It took me only a few minutes to find a hole through to the forest of menos, where I found myself in an unfamiliar segment of the world spanning series of caverns. After making note of the general shape using an echolocation-like usage of my spiritual pressure, I took of into sonido, abusing the speed to travel quickly.

I blitzed through several caverns, searching for one I found familiar, so as to navigate my way back to my home cavern. I had done this before, albeit, it took a few days back then. Of course, to be honest, I think I was running in circles . . . and I've gotten faster besides, so I hope I'll find my way back in less time than I did last time.

So, I eventually slowed down considerably, and started looking around for new kinds of mosses to collect for my "rock garden". The small amount of plant-life in Hueco Mundo meant that I was usually starved for variety, so I hoped to find something new in unfamiliar caverns, and since I had nothing truly pressing to worry about, .

I was glad that Tsuki had found me, as I wouldn't have been able to relax like that otherwise, and would probably be rushing back to check on her if she hadn't. And Zilly never got a chance to fight in the first place, so he should be fine . . . unless Ashido set trap mine-kido of something, which I've never seen in bleach before, so that shouldn't be much of a problem. _'Not to self, invent or inspire trap mine attack.'_

After an hour or so casually shifting my way through the caverns, I had found a few small plants that looked unfamiliar, some of whom actually had fern-like leaves. 'Hopefully these will grow in my cavern.' I thought, noting that the stone was a slightly different color here than back home.

Finally, after what had to have been half a day's travel(I'd assume, remember, living in eternal knight sort of makes your sense of time wonky.) I finally found a cavern I was familiar with, and slowed down to what equated to a walking pace for me. You know, being smaller than before just made my increased speed seem even faster.

* * *

 **POV: Tsuki Inaba**

I was woken by the sound of an explosion echoing through through the entrance to the cavern, and the sensation of a reiatsu flowing over me. I lept to my feet, tensed in preparation for a fight, if only for an instant, before recognizing the pressure flowing over me as that belonging to the master of my current residence.

I relaxed and hooped over to the entrance to the cave, feeling relieved that he had returned. With my hearing it was easy to here him coming, his bar feet slapping of the stone floor, despite the fact that he was still several kilometres away, at the other, now collapsed cavern entrance. After several minutes of waiting, he emerged from the portal, yawning. He somehow made the forced inhalation seem like something rare and precious. As it was the first time I had ever herd him yawn, I figured that was fair.

"Your back." I said out loud, causing him to pause, and the sound of hair sliding against cloth let me know he had nodded, before he shook his head and responded verbaly.

"Yeah. Sorry if I took a while. Those Shinigamini . . . shinigmai . . . _shinigami_ (dang tongue)were jumpier than rabbits. No offence."

"None taken." I replied, my ears twitching. He then walked over to the middle of the cavern, and began to look around, if the sound of head motions was any indication. After several minutes of searching, he sighed and said "I'll clean this later." and walked into his house. Listening for a few more minutes as he climbed into his now oversized bed.

I then hooped away, back to were I was sleeping originally and settled down. I must have managed to sleep longer than him, as by the time I woke up, he was already working to fix the damage to his moss garden that he and the shinigami had caused. I absently noticed that Zilly was on the other side of the cavern avoiding him, but passed that off as his normal behaviour.

I listened as he ground stones into gravel and dropped the resulting materiel into the holes in the ground, stomping it down. He then walked to the edge of the cavern, and began to tear up small amounts moss from the more out of the way areas of the cave. He then placed the pieces of moss over the gravel.

Finally, he formed a blade out of his reiatsu(an ability that had always impressed me, from the amount of control it signified.) and slit his own wrist, using the resulting flow of blood to "water" the moses.

"I could do that for you." I say to him as I hoop up to him, causing him to stop bleeding himself and turn to face me.

"What?" he asked, his voice displaying his curiosity far better than it ever could before his transformation.

"The moss. I could do that for it." I say, moving my head so that my nose was pointed right were his voice originated from, a trick I learned to give people the impression I was looking at them.

"You mean . . . you know, there's no way to say it without sounding weird or like a serial killer. That, or a bad movie villain. _"I will water my mosses with your my blood, my pretty, mu hahaha."_ like that."

I tilted my head to the side. "Whats a movie?" I asked, honestly curious. "I've heard Zilly talk about them, but never asked."

He perked up at that. "Oh, I guess the best way to describe it would be to say it's like a play. You know, with actors telling a story . . . only, with moving pictures and . . . you know, it might as well just be play for you." he sounded a bit . . . I forgot to word. Flustered? No that's not it . . .

"Anyway," he cut of my thought. "I wouldn't feel right making you water my garden, I mean, you can't even enjoy the colors the way I do." OK, that comment annoyed me, for some reason.

"I'll have you know enjoy the moss to!" I exclaimed, causing him to shift suddenly in surprise. "I've spent hours just feeling it between my toes." I raised my paw and wiggled my toes for emphasis. He snorts in response.

"Really?" I could tell from his tone of voice that he was amused, something that I had never been able to do before.

"Yes, it's soft, and squishy. Not like sand, that's just rough." I respond. He snorts and from the sound of his hair moving, I can tell he's shaking his head.

"Ok, you have a point, but it would still feel wrong to me to let you do it. I know you can probably handle the pain, but it would just feel wrong." he shook his head again, before he froze for a moment. "You know, I should probably be worried that the most emotional I've ever heard you was when your trying to get me to let you hurt yourself."

I twitched my ears as I tried to figure out how to respond to that comment, before I realized. "Your trying to chance the subject."

He sighed. "Yeah, was I that obvious?"

"Well, it took me a moment to notice, but I'm not really that good at . . . talking."

My host slumped to the ground. "Join the club. I've never been that good at it. And the mess that my voice has been the last few years hasn't helped. I've had to intentionally change my speech pattern just to make my meaning clear. To be frank, being able to speak the way I _want_ to? It's _intoxicating_."

I tilt my head to the side. "I was planing to ask you about that, the change in speak pattern, that is, but didn't know how to ask without sounding . . . awkward."

At this point, I heard his begin to shuffle around, settling into a better sitting position. "I know all about that." he sighed. "I've had entire conversations just trying to find an opening to broach a topic without it sounding out of place. It could get . . . yeah . . . " he sighed again, before snorting.

"Of course, that's when I got a _chance_ to speak. I can't count the number of times that I was sitting at the dinner table and wanted to say something concerning the conversation, only to have someone just talk through me, and only realize I had wanted to say something when they had already gotten passed that topic and gone through two or three other ones, at which point it would feel _way_ to awkward to say what I had wanted."

"You know, it was bad enough that I started to actively dread family gatherings. I mean, their was never anything I liked to eat, I could never half the names, or at least who the name belonged to, and all we did was sit around talking about things I didn't care about, and like I said, I could almost never get a word in sideways when I was interested. And then people got anoyed if I tried to go downstairs to take a nap." He sighed yet again, and rested his head on his hand. "And now, I miss those . . . get together's, I guess they'd be called . . . "

I listened as he spoke, interested in his stories, and found myself comparing them to my own experiences. But then I realized. "Didn't you say you had a hard time remembering your time . . . alive?" I asked somewhat nervously, as I didn't want to bring up a painful subject.

He paused for a moment, seemingly thinking, before he responded. "Yes, I did. But since my . . . transformation . . . I've had an easier time. Remembering, that is. Details, events, feelings, all clearer then before. Still distant, but the fog is mostly gone."

I twitched my ears twice as I took that in, then asked the question at the back of my mind. "Does that mean . . . your name . . . ?"

Immediately, he rather dramatically fell flat on his back. "No. Not that. I've already spent a couple hours trying to remember, but . . . nothing. I can remember whole conversations, but not my own name." he let out a humourless laugh. "Bit of a cruel joke, that." he sighed, the sounding honestly forlorn. "Honestly, is it to much to ask to simply have something to call myself?" he sighed and let his head fall to the ground, smacking in spite of the moss.

I twitched my ears towards him again, my mind wandering back to when I first set out to find him. "can . . . could I call you Setsuna?"

"What?" I heard him shift his head to look at me from the ground.

"Setsuna. It's the name I used for you when I first decided to find you. I chose that because it means "A moment", and you were really fast. That, and it's unisex and I didn't know if you were a boy or a girl. I just started calling the hooded hollow after I met Zilly since it was a better description. But, well, I think it suits you."

I heard him slump back to the ground for a moment, before he got back to his feet and walked over to me. He crouched down beside me, and set his had on my shoulder. "Setsuna, huh? . . . I like the sound of that. Thanks, Tsuki-chan." he gave me a hug, then walked away.

I was pleased for a moment at my successfully cheering him up, then realized that we hadn't actually reached an agreement over my watering(blooding?) the moss.

* * *

 **AN: 1:29 AM March 16th, 2019. ugh. I should have been done this chapter last week, but I kept getting lazy. Sorry, no excuses, just being lazy and having a poor seclude.**

 **Now, onto the reviews.**

 **BclassDemon: Well you have the dropping, now we just need the reacting. I may actually do that, but no promises, depends on weather it feels right when I try to write it.**

 **Emrys Akayuki: thank you for the complement. And yes, I know that I need to work on that . . . some other time . . .**

 **Scaunders: Because he isn't used to having a physical weapon, he just subconsciously returned his bandages to a more "natural" feeling position without realizing. So basically, he screwed up.**

 **Keylars: . . . yes, I can feel you sarcasm. I know I repeat the same words to much, I may fix that later, but right now it's almost 2 in the morning, so I'm going to put it off until later . . . and may forget . . .**

 **Ok, that's it for the review response, until next time!**


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